Flicker
by Just A Little Birdy
Summary: (SEQUEL TO SPARROW) The eyes of the world are on the Avengers after Johannesburg and Sokovia, two major battles with one very large death toll. Not that Imogen cares. She's got her own war to fight, right here on the streets of New York, one the Avengers aren't interested in. She might even make some friends along the way.
1. Coming Home

_A/N: The sequel is here! Two years after Sparrow finished. On its eighth version. I'm not very good at this._

 _Big special thanks to winter-is-ending and puffandproud on tumblr for giving this a read through and catching my spelling errors and such, I don't know where I'd be without you. And if any of you readers want to come hang out on tumblr, hit me up at sparrow-fic or herebesparrows._

 _Please remember to leave a review (the sole thing that keeps me going) and follow/favourite if you're enjoying! :)_

 **Coming Home**

The sound of a dog barking was what brought Imogen to consciousness.

Cracking an eye open, she glared at Lucky from where she lay curled up on the couch, silently vowing to kick him out every night from now on. He'd had his chance; never again was she being woken up at some random hour of the night by Clint's crazy dog.

What _time_ was it, she wondered, groaning and forcing herself to sit up. It was still dark outside, the only light in the apartment coming from the TV, which was still playing the 24-hour news channel she'd fallen asleep to. She'd been watching the fall-out from the Avengers battle in Sokovia. They were still talking about it, even though the only live footage they had to show was a big, smoking crater in the middle of a crumbling city. The Avengers had left before she'd fallen asleep, high-tailing it back to America before another crazy robot could climb out of the rubble and try to kill them, and the Stark Relief Foundation had yet to set up any kind of visible camp for the media to stalk and spy on.

At the window, Lucky whined again, tail sweeping the floor. Sighing, Imogen pulled herself up off the couch and went to the window to see what his problem was. The street outside was deserted, one of the streetlights flickering intermittently as it had been for the past few weeks. No one was coming to fix it, not without Clint to bully them into it. Her eyes turned briefly to the sky and half asleep as she was, she almost turned away before doing a double-take.

You couldn't see much from her apartment but, being on the highest floor, you could just see the top of some of the skyscrapers in Manhattan. Including Avengers Tower. Where two bright lights were currently lowering themselves from the sky.

Not particularly stealthy for the Avengers, but it was three AM and they had just saved the world, so she could give them a pass. Besides, she wasn't going to complain about anything that let her know they were back.

Suddenly she was wide awake. "Good dog," she mumbled to Lucky, patting him on her way past. "Please don't start barking at every plane that flies over the city." He barked once more, just to spite her. She ignored him in favour of searching for her jacket, which it turned out had disappeared into the pile of clothes on her bed upstairs. Lucky was at the door before she could even put the jacket on, keys to the car that Clint had convinced Stark to loan to her in his mouth. "You think you're coming?" she asked him as she dressed.

His head tipped to the side.

"Give me the keys," she sighed in defeat. He dropped them at her feet, and she took the liberty of back-tracking to rinse them off in the sink. She was pretty sure Lucky chased rats and mice in his spare time, like his own brand of vigilantism. Gross.

The lights were on in the apartments right next to hers, she noticed as she crept down the hallway. She felt a little bit guilty about that, because the only reason they would be up at this time of night is Lucky's barking. Maybe she'd ask Clint to give his dog a dressing down about barking in the middle of the night, now that he was back. She only walked and breathed easily once she was downstairs, where everything was quiet and dark. At least he hadn't woken _everyone_ in the building.

Outside was freezing, as you would expect of New York in the middle of Autumn. Shivering, she pulled her coat tighter and hurried to her car. Lucky, ever the opportunist, was in before she was, slumped in the passenger's seat like _he_ was the one who'd been rudely awoken, not the other way around. Imogen rolled her eyes and climbed in, turning the heaters up as high as they could go. Thank god for Tony Stark's mindless generosity. The subway would have been a long, cold ride, and who knows what kind of creeps hung out down there at this time of the morning.

It was an easy drive to the Tower, the streets more or less deserted except for the ever-busy thoroughfares. Three AM was a terrible time to be awake, but a great time to go driving. She didn't even have to struggle to park right by the Tower. Park Avenue was just as cold as Brooklyn, she discovered upon getting out, closely followed by the dog, and had the added perk of a stiff wind blowing straight down it. She shoved her hands in her pockets and just about ran around to the back entrance Clint always told her to use in an emergency.

It looked like a heavy-duty door, sans locks or keypads or anything save a handle and the tiny eye of a camera above it. To her surprise, she met no resistance when she shoved it open, nor when she stepped into the small hallway beyond.

"Good morning, Miss Haylock," a disembodied Irish voice that wasn't JARVIS greeted her, echoing in the small space. She jumped and turned towards the ceiling, even though she already knew there would be nothing there. At the end of the hall, an elevator slid open.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked the walls, walking towards the elevator.

"My name is FRIDAY," the definitely feminine AI introduced herself.

"What happened to JARVIS?"

"That information is classified." Imogen huffed a sigh and ran a hand over her face. She was way too tired for this.

"Are you Tony Stark's?" she asked, just to make sure HYDRA hadn't killed JARVIS or something.

"I am a program created by Tony Stark, yes."

 _Good enough_ , Imogen decided, and stepped into the elevator.

"Where would you like to go, Miss Haylock?" FRIDAY asked.

"Wherever Clint Barton is," she replied, leaning against the wall. One of the floor numbers lit up of its own accord and the elevator began its smooth ascent, gentle music piping through a speaker in the roof as it went. Of course Tony Stark would have elevator music.

"Clint Barton is in the medical wing to your left," FRIDAY informed her as the elevator dinged and opened. It occurred to Imogen suddenly that Clint could be injured. Probably _was_ injured, if he was still anywhere near Medical this long after the battle had ended. Usually he was out of there as soon as humanly possible.

And the news had been speculating about an Avenger casualty, she remembered with a sinking feeling. She'd ignored it before, because they had no evidence at all bar one shaken eye-witness, who claimed to see a body among the refugees SHIELD had picked up in a spectacular display of heroism involving and out of date helicarrier.

"Miss Haylock?" FRIDAY prompted, and with a start she realised she was still standing in the elevator like an idiot.

"Uh…thanks, FRIDAY," she forced out, getting out of the elevator.

"You're welcome," the accented voice replied, and closed the elevator behind her.

Almost afraid of what she might find, Imogen forced herself to follow the hall until she found a set of glass door leading into a very hospital-like area that she hadn't seen before.

She almost ran into Natasha on her way in, the spy stopping her with a hand on her shoulder just before she could. "Imogen?" she said and she looked and sounded exhausted, like she hadn't slept in a week. The shadows under her eyes told stories on their own. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for Clint," Imogen replied, shrugging off her hand. "His dumb dog is psychic or something. Woke me up when you guys got back."

Natasha's eyes narrowed like she didn't believe her story, but she was too tired to argue. "He's that way," she said, gesturing behind her. "Across the hall."

"Is he-?"

"He's fine," Natasha interrupted her. "It's a long story. I'm sure he'll be happy to tell you all about it." She was very abrupt. Imogen caught her underlying message and got out of her way, watching her leave through the same doors she'd just entered. Then she wound her way through the medical staff, expertly avoiding the doctors and nurses rushing back and forth across the room, and found the hallway Nat was talking about.

It was easy then to find Clint, who wasn't in a hospital bed, to her relief, but sitting next to one, staring at the wall with an intensity she didn't often see from him. A girl was curled up in the chair next to him, fast asleep. She was completely unfamiliar, and young for an Avenger or SHIELD agent or whatever it was that got her access to the upper level sof the Tower.

There was a boy in the bed next to them, young like the girl, and deathly pale. The two strangers were brother and sister, she guessed; they looked similar, despite her vintage goth style of clothing and his shock of silver hair.

After a moment, Imogen knocked on the door, startling Clint out of his stupor and almost waking the girl. The boy didn't stir. "Imogen?" the archer said in a low voice, staring at her in disbelief.

"The one and only," she said dryly, letting Lucky in and then shutting the door. Clint held a finger to his lips, glancing pointedly at the girl next to him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, leaning down to pat the dog. "What time is it?"

"You don't want to know how early it is," she replied, quieter this time. She followed the dog across the room. "Your dog started barking right when you guys got back to New York and woke up half the building, so I figured I'd make my escape before Simone came over to chew me out about it." Simone, single mother and pie-making extraordinaire, lived right across the hallway and practically ran the building when Clint was away. She was also basically a living complaints box for the building; Imogen was pretty sure the local mafia had given up on the building not because of Hawkeye's reputation but because they were scared of Simone.

"Pretty rude to your tenants to let a dog bark at all hours of the morning," Clint quipped with a grin.

"It's _your_ building," she pointed out. " _And_ your dog. He won't even listen to me. He just does whatever he wants."

"Lucky doesn't listen to anyone," Clint said affectionately, giving the dog a scratch. Lucky looked way too happy with himself.

"Only because you spoil him," she pointed out.

"I do not."

"Have you taught him anything except how to steal pizza out of a box?"

"Yes," he said unhappily. "He sits too. Lucky, sit." Clint looked at the dog expectantly. The dog stared back, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.

"Impressive," Imogen said smugly.

"Aw, dog, no," Clint muttered and slumped back in his chair.

"So what are you doing in here?" she asked, looking around the sterile white room. "I thought you hated everything to do with hospitals."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Don't worry kid, I'd rather be anywhere but here. Promised Wanda I'd stay though." He pointed to the girl, who was still sleeping. "And this punk-" He gestured to the boy next, "-sort of saved my life, so."

"Sokovia was fun, then." It was supposed to be a joke, but her voice fell flat.

"Fun is not the word I would use," Clint mumbled.

"Want to tell me about it?"

He yawned. "Maybe tomorrow. When I'm sure I'm actually alive."

"You look pretty alive to me," she assured him.

He smiled. "Wish I was as convinced as you are."

Imogen pulled a face. "Will you at least tell me who these two are?" she pressed. "If I'm going to be replaced, I at least want to know who by."

"No one's _replacing_ you," Clint replied. "They're new Avengers…if they still want to be when they wake up."

Imgoen cast a dubious look at the boy, who was a little too pale and still for her liking. There were a lot of machines by his bed too, more than you'd expect for someone who was just sleeping it off. "Is he _going_ to wake up?" she asked pointedly.

"Pietro?" Clint hesitated.

"He will wake." Behind Clint, the girl opened her eyes. Imogen could swear she saw a hint of red flash through them.

"The doctor's think he's got a healing factor," Clint explained. "They're guessing that's why he's even still alive." He shot a glance at Wanda, who met his eyes and then turned her sharp gaze on Imogen in turn.

"Who is this?" she asked in a heavily accented voice.

"This is my friend Imogen," Clint answered. "Imogen, this is Wanda."

"You are an Avenger?" Wanda said before Imogen could say anything.

"No," Imogen hurried to correct her. "I just do some training with Clint and hang around and stuff."

"Imogen hasn't decided what she wants to do yet," Clint threw in unhelpfully.

She ignored him. "Are _you_ an Avenger?"

Wanda hesitated, her eyes flicking to her brother and back again. "Yes," she said finally. "I think so. I want to be."

"You _are_ ," Clint told her firmly. Imogen was pretty sure this wasn't a new topic of conversation for them. Wanda graced him with a smile but did not reply, instead turning back to her brother.

Clint's attention moved back to Imogen. "You look tired," he observed.

"Not as tired as you," she shot back immediately.

"I've got a reason to be up this late. You're just irresponsible."

"I can do what I want."

He sighed. "Go and sleep, Imogen. I'll meet you upstairs later."

She considered staying a little longer, just to spite him, but the thought of crashing out in one of the Tower's guest rooms was just too inviting. "Fine," she acquiesced. "But you better tell me the whole story. The media don't know _anything_."

"I will," he promised. Satisfied, she nodded and left him to it, shooting one last glance at the injured boy next to him before she closed the door.


	2. Reconnaissance

_A/N: Took me three days just to edit this beast and I'm not even sure I like it._

 _Shoutout to sweet sunset rain for all her awesome messages that made my year, and theflyingpenguin for two! reviews I love them they made me laugh so much. And of course, shoutout to all my other reviewers and friends for the support, you're the reason this is here 3_

 _Thanks Singer Of Water for beta-ing._

 _Enjoy!_

 **2: Reconnaissance**

Clint told her the whole story over breakfast at two in the afternoon.

She barely registered the taste of the cornflakes and cold milk she was eating as she listened to what had to be the craziest story she'd ever heard. It turned out he'd been keeping the whole robot fiasco a secret from her for almost a week too, since he'd said it had begun on the night of Stark's last party. For once, she was almost sorry she'd left early (although almost being killed by crazy robots probably wasn't worth sticking around for anyway.

And then he told her about Johannesburg, and the Hulk's acid trip, and Seoul, and the twins and finally, Sokovia. She'd heard most of the basic details of each fight from the news, but Clint knew everything they'd only been able to speculate over, like Ultron stealing vibranium, or Nat being kidnapped. Or his own very near death, which he told slowly and with pain in his eyes. By the end, Imogen's head was reeling.

"I can't believe you fought an army of actual evil robots," she said as he finished the story and she the cereal. "It sounds like something straight out of a movie."

Clint shook his head. "That's not even the weirdest part."

"What do you mean?" Imogen asked.

He froze. "Classified," was what he came up with in the end, much to her displeasure. "Just…trust me, Ultron was not the weirdest part."

"The same kind of classified as whatever happened to JARVIS?" she pressed.

Clint frowned. "Who'd you ask about JARVIS?"

"The elevator," she deadpanned. He looked at her suspiciously, like she might just be joking. "Fine. FRIDAY, or whatever the new AI is called."

"Oh," Clint said, face clearing.

"Don't worry." Imogen shot an annoyed glance at the ceiling. "She won't give me _anything_. Not half as fun as JARVIS."

"If you want to find out what happened, you should just hang around more often," he advised her with a grin, and got up to rinse his coffee cup.

"Or you could just _tell me_ ," she called after him.

"I _can't_ ," he insisted. "I'm a secret agent. I have to keep secrets."

She snorted in derision. "You're an unemployed ex-SHIELD agent who volunteers sometimes as an Avenger."

"Being an Avenger is a job!" he argued.

Imogen shook her head and stood up too, taking her dishes into the kitchen and shoving him out of the way of the sink. "Do you get paid? It's not a job unless you get paid."

"I get paid," he said, _pouting_ at her.

"Coffee doesn't count as a wage, Clint," she told him, and left the bowl in the sink for someone else to deal with.

When she turned back around, his eyes were narrowed. "How do you know if I get paid or not anyway?" he asked.

"I had this eye-opening conversation with Captain America a few weeks ago," she said non-chalantly.

"Steve?" he said. "Aw, kid, you're not replacing me are you?"

"You started it," she reminded him. "With those kids downstairs. Wanda and…the other one."

"Pietro," he supplied. "I should go and check on them, actually."

"What, are you babysitting them?" she teased.

Clint shrugged. "Steve said I should keep an eye on them. Are you coming?"

She considered it, and then shook her head. "I've got stuff to do," she said as casually as she could.

"You never have stuff to do," he noted suspiciously.

Imogen rolled her eyes. "Maybe I made some friends that aren't into wrecking entire cities over a long weekend."

"No," he decided. "You don't have friends either."

"Whatever," she said, heading towards the door before he could trap her. "I'll see you later."

The elevator opened before he could say anything else, and she made her escape.

oooooooooo

'Stuff to do' was in a building site two subway stops and a short walk from the tower. She got there as the sun began to set, casting long shafts of golden light through the empty windows and metal scaffolding of the building, and didn't hesitate to slip through a small gap in the fence around it, glancing around in case there was anyone around to see her. The street was deserted though; most of the buildings here were still being rebuilt from the alien attack a couple of years ago. Some had even been knocked down completely, leaving empty building sites in their wake. It was bad for business, having the whole street in various states of repair, and so there weren't many businesses or apartment tenants left here now, which was probably why her contact liked to meet here often.

As always, she was on the second floor, hiding in the shadows of a half-finished wall as she looked out onto the street below. Her dark hair fell in perfectly straight lines down the back of her blue sweater, and when she turned around, a newly cut fringe hid her eyes from view. Imogen had to wonder how she could put up with it in her eyes like that.

They stared at each other for a second, like they'd never met before. "I swear you live here," Imogen said eventually, breaking the spell.

"Y-you're late," Ruby replied. A Starkpad appeared in her hands as she uncrossed her arms.

"I was busy," Imogen said with a shrug. Ruby looked annoyed; for a minute Imogen thought she might just jump out of the stutter and back into her old self, like she'd been hoping the girl would for the three months that they'd been meeting like this. It had been a good five years since they'd first met, back at SHIELD's Academy where they'd almost been friends, but Imogen could still remember how Ruby used to be. She'd been more volatile than Imogen in training, and there was no one to have her back like Will or HYDRA had for Imogen. They'd been almost-friends for five months, and then Ruby had tried to burn a building down or something to prove a point and been dropped from the Communications course in the most dramatic exit ever seen.

Back then, she'd been loud and uncompromising and demanded the attention of everyone in the room. Now, she stuttered and cowered and hid from whatever monsters she imagined were chasing her. She'd used her impressive hacking skills to wipe herself from existence, and had created at least six fake identities. Her hands shook constantly, physically unable to stay still for even a moment. As far as Imogen was aware, the only time she came out of whatever hole she spent her time in was to meet here, and they only met in person because at some point Ruby had decided that texting anything other than a time and date to arrange a meeting was unsafe and would get them caught.

"You said you had something," Imogen said, focusing on her current mission instead of the past.

The other woman nodded. "I-I went through HYDRA's b-bank accounts," she said. "They h-have a lot. One is p-paying…uh, funds into this r-research and drug testing place."

"Is that important?"

Ruby nodded. "I-it's connect to, uh, three other accounts. T-two are false, but uh, t-the third takes payments. _Big_ payments."

"And?" HYDRA getting into pharmaceutical research was mildly interesting, but she was here for something else, and so was Ruby.

"The uh, f-fake account I found l-last month that I think is L-Lena's has been paying i-into it for uh…seven months," Ruby said. Imogen was suitably impressed; _finally,_ the other girl had found some useful information on INTEL. They'd been looking for the covert organisation since they'd met three months ago, but there was precious little information on them, and they'd disappeared right after Imogen had escaped their clutches. No one else was willing to register them as existant, let alone a threat, not even the Avengers, so it was easy for them to fly under the radar and avoid the wrath of the few people who knew what they were up to.

Ruby, fortunately, was an excellent hacker as well as a victim of INTEL, not that she would tell Imogen exactly what they had done to her. She was guessing it had something to do with the stutter and the shaking.

"What are they buying?" she asked.

Ruby shrugged. "I-I don't know but uh, whatever it is g-goes to a wareh-house in Hell's Kitchen. I h-have the address."

"You couldn't trace the account back or anything?"

"No." She paused, tapping at the screen of her Starkpad. "T-there's uh, nothing else on here. It g-goes to the warehouse and a driver p-picks it up. They've n-never even visited the company."

"That would be easy," Imogen said dryly. "Can I have the address then?"

"I-I texted it to you," Ruby said. "I'll s-send the next shipment t-time too." A flick of her fingers across the device in her hand, and Imogen's phone buzzed in her pocket. "There's o-one tonight, if uh…"

She trailed off, but Imogen got the point. If she went to the warehouse, she'd be able to catch them while they transferred whatever it was they were buying from HYDRA into INTEL's truck. And maybe she'd be able to figure out where it was going… "Any way to find out where it goes without me having to stow away in the truck or something?" she asked. Much as she wanted to find INTEL, the idea of getting into a truck bound for who-knows-where (the only way of following them without getting caught that she could come up with) wasn't exactly an attractive prospect. She didn't want to play right into INTEL's hands. Not again.

Ruby started, and then dug around in her pockets, pulling out a small metal device, about the size of a large pill. "T-tracker," she explained as Imogen took it. "Drop it in the, uh, truck anyw-where and I-I'll follow it on h-here." She held up the Starkpad and Imogen nodded, stuffing the tracker into her own pocket.

"Is that it?" she asked, when Ruby didn't say anything else.

"Uh…" Ruby seemed to have trouble latching onto the words she wanted. It was a common problem for her at the end of their meetings, when she'd said everything she'd rehearsed. It just made Imogen even more curious as to what had happened to her since she'd left the Academy.

"T-they send guards with the p-packages," she managed finally. "I t-think. Probably, uh, HYDRA."

"Awesome," Imogen sighed. Because she needed to be dealing with HYDRA as well as INTEL.

"I'm so glad you think so highly of us."

The voice echoed up the concrete stairwell behind them, bouncing cheerfully around the hollow space they stood in. Both girls froze. Imogen's stomach dropped as she remembered that they were on the second floor, with only that one stairwell leading down.

The man that had spoken took his time climbing the stairs. When he appeared, he did so dressed in light tactical gear with a gun swinging casually from his hand. "I suggest that you don't try to run," he said, a hint of a British accent to his words. "I don't really need you alive. There's no escape anyway – I've got a team circling the building."

"Who are you?" Imogen asked, eyeing the gun. He wasn't pointing it at them, but did hold it with the sort of ease that suggested he would easily have a bullet in them if they tried to make a break for any of the pillars around the big, empty floor that could give them cover (or, god forbid, the _staircase_ , which was so far away now it was a dream).

"Alex Blackwell, at your service." He grinned lazily, well aware that he had them trapped like rats. "Well, actually, I'm here to escort you to our great and fearless leader, so I suppose it is someone else's service." He looked at them expectantly, waiting for them to laugh, and huffed impatiently when they didn't. "Unless you hacked our accounts _to_ be taken in by HYDRA. In which case, I'm all too happy to assist."

"Thanks," Imogen said dryly.

He laughed and turned from her to Ruby, who was still frozen to the spot, eyes fixed on the wall behind him. He wandered closer, and snapped his fingers in front of her face. She didn't move. "Interesting," he said. "Did she run out of batteries?" He shot a nasty grin at Imogen, like he expected her to react, but she just shrugged. He turned to Ruby again, leaning down to look into each eye, waving a hand in front of her face, and then tapping her cheek like he was trying to wake her up.

Her eyes snapped to him. And then he went flying across the room and into one of the pillars that held the place up. There was a loud _crack_ as he hit it, and then his body crumpled to the floor.

Imogen gaped openly. "What-?" she started, but Ruby was shaking her head.

"C-can't-don't-not-" she stammered, and then pointed towards the stairs. Imogen grabbed her arm as she stumbled towards them, pulling her back.

"HYDRA are all down there, idiot," she said, and towed the other girl towards the back of the building. There were several unfinished windows there, just gaps in the wall that no one had gotten around to covering up yet. She'd seen scaffolding outside the first time they'd met here; now, she shoved Ruby through the window and onto the narrow walkway just as she heard boots marching up the stairs.

"I-I think….uh…" the other girl continued to stammer as Imogen climbed through after her. "I-I uh…I k-killed him."

"Wait, _you_ did that?" Imogen asked sharply, landing in a crouch on the scaffold. A single bullet followed her out a moment later, whistling through the air above their heads. "Can you do it again?" she asked urgently, as she pushed Ruby along the walkway, towards the corner of the building.

"N-no – I…m-maybe." Ruby didn't seem sure of her answer, probably because she was still trying to catch up on what was happened as Imogen pushed her bodily along the scaffolding.

A bullet ripped through the wood at Ruby's feet. She reared back in fear, falling into Imogen and knocking them both askew. Somewhere in the confusion Imogen managed to get a hand wrapped around the back of Ruby's shirt and drag her down and back against the building, out of sight of the shooter below.

"Stop!" another one shouted. He was following them along the scaffolding, gun trained on Imogen's back.

"Could you do it to him?" Imogen hissed at Ruby, too scared to even look back at him.

Ruby's face screwed up in concentration as she raised her hand. For a moment nothing happened – then, with a swipe of her hand, the man on the scaffold went flying sideways, over the railing and down to the ground a floor below.

"Nice." Imogen manoeuvred around her, leading the way this time and dragging Ruby along behind her. Another shot flew past their heads and into the concrete wall next to them. Instead of flattening herself to the walkway and whimpering like Imogen was expecting, Ruby wrenched her arm from the other girl's grip and leant over the side of the walkway to gesture again. There was a strangled cry from down below.

Then normal Ruby returned, and she shot backwards, curling into a ball as close to the wall as she could get.

Imogen stood slowly, moving her eyes over every inch of the ground below. No shooters remained, so far as she could see; just the two Ruby had taken down. One was groaning loudly right below them, his leg sticking out at an odd angle. The other was over by the fence, unusually still.

Quickly and easily, she pulled Ruby to her feet, shaking her a bit to try and bring her out of it, and then scrambled down the scaffolding, landing gracefully on both feet in its shadow below. The man with the broken leg had dropped his gun and she picked it up now, checking the clip and safety. Only then did she realise Ruby hadn't come down, and was still frozen on the first step of the climb. She was clinging to the metal frame so hard her knuckles were white, and she was shaking hard.

"Hurry up!" Imogen called, as loudly as she dared. HYDRA came in teams of at least ten, and they had only disposed of three so far.

"I-I-" Ruby didn't get to finish – a gunshot cracked up on her level of the building and snapped her into action. As she hurled herself down to the next step, another man rounded the corner on the ground, appearing almost on top of Imogen. She spun and shot, but he was _too_ close and it was a wild shot. The gun was slapped out of her hands almost at the same time as she pulled the trigger, falling back into the dirt.

She ducked under his fist and brought her own back up to his chin as she rose. His head snapped back painfully at the force of her whole body crashing into it. Her foot came up next, heel driving into his stomach and he stumbled back a step. Silently, she thanked Clint for his enforced training program.

The man began to rally, raising his fists again. Ruby landed on his head before he could get a swing in, and they went down in a writhing mess of limbs. Somehow, she managed to kick him in the face, and then she started punching – finally, _there_ was the Ruby Imogen remembered, throwing wild punches at a man who was already still on the ground.

Not that they had time for that. Assured that he wouldn't be back on his feet any time soon, Imogen dragged Ruby off him, grabbing his gun as she did so. "We need to get out of here," she said as Ruby righted herself. "This way." She took the lead, gun ready, and headed the way their last opponent had come, moving as quickly as she dared. She would have loved nothing more than to run, as fast and as far as she could, but that was a good way to get yourself shot in the back. Even Clint wasn't that stupid.

There was another man at the end of the alley. She shot him in the leg before he could shoot her, and he dropped like a stone. Ruby's foot in his face ensured he would stay there. It was a short dash to the gap in the fence, and then they were almost home free.

 _Almost._

Three of the remaining five agents were watching the street. As soon as the girls came out into the open they appeared; one from a car across the street, the others from the shadows of nearby buildings.

Ruby, who was a mess at this point, took one wild-eyed look at them, and bolted in a blind panic, flying down the sidewalk amidst a maelstrom of bullets. All three turned to shoot at her, and as much as she hated the whole situation, Imogen took the opportunity to turn and sprint in the other direction.

She got a whole three seconds of grace before the bullets started flying around her too. Not daring to look back to see where they were or if Ruby had made it, she covered her head and made herself as small as she could, pushing herself to break-neck pace. Her heart raced along ahead of her, and her breath came in sharp gasps. After the first intersection, she swung left without stopping and almost fell; as she righted herself, she heard someone curse and stumble behind her, and chanced a look over her shoulder.

Only one, Gun in hand, but running too hard to get off a proper shot. She still had one of their guns in _her_ hand, she realised suddenly. The grip was warm between her fingers. She'd been clinging to it tightly without even realising it.

She got off three desperate shots over her shoulder as she fell. They all missed, but the man dropped back. One slammed into the body of a passing car, making the driver swerve and almost crash in surprise. Imogen would have felt sorry for them if she had the time.

She turned right across the road, crossing diagonally and praying a car wouldn't hit her. On the other side, it was only a few steps to a dark side alley. She skid to a halt and ducked down it, disappearing into the shadows.

The HYDRA agent would have seen her, she knew as she hunkered down behind a bright blue dumpster and tried to catch some of her breath. She was going to have to face him sooner or later. But she had the advantage now, hidden in the shadows while he was still in plain sight, and he was one man now instead of a whole team. She checked her gun again.

The man came to the alley a lot slower than she had, trying to step quietly so as to surprise her. It might have worked, if there was any of the traffic this part of New York would usually garner. Unfortunately for him, no one liked driving down a street full of abandoned businesses and building sites.

He crept ever closer. Imogen forced a deep breath in and out of her lungs. She'd practised this with Clint. He'd use the corner of the building for protection, and the other dumpster, which she'd bypassed on her way in. To get there, he'd have to dash across the alley and expose himself.

And he would, because he had to if he wanted to flush her out of hiding.

 _Stay under cover, don't expose yourself to shoot, don't waste bullets you don't have_. Clint would probably kill her if he knew what she was doing right now.

"I know you're down there, Hacker Girl." His voice was high and playful, meant to throw her off her guard. A shiver ran down her spine at the sound of it. She didn't like it when they started talking, whether it was the annoying gloating and trash talk HYDRA encouraged from their agents, or creepy stuff like this. Better they just try to shoot her and be done with it.

She stopped the creeping feeling by reminding herself that he was an idiot who thought _she_ was the one hacking their accounts, not Ruby. Just a regular old henchman, like she used to be. If he was anything like she had been, taking him down wouldn't be any problem at all.

"You shouldn't have run," he continued, voice fading back to normal. "We just wanted to ask some questions. Might have even offered you a job. Alex is – was – good like that." Her stomach turned at the idea of joining HYDRA again, after everything she'd been through to renounce them. Will or his team would have her head on a stick by the next morning if she even dared.

He laughed at a joke only he had thought of. It echoed down the alley, and suddenly she couldn't sit there completely blind anymore. Back pressed to the dirty plastic side of the dumpster, she craned her neck and peered around it towards the mouth of the alley. He was even more of an idiot than she'd given him credit for, she discovered; the HYDRA goon was standing in the middle of the street's entrance, gun hanging casually from his fingers. No cover, no finger on the trigger. He didn't even see her peeking out at him, focused entirely on the other dumpster.

She could do this. Another thing Clint had been teaching her; to shoot from instinct, instead of taking precious seconds to aim, or wasting ammo on wild shots. It was an archery thing. She wasn't very good at it either, but…well, there wasn't really any way out of here except shooting him, and she didn't want to spend the whole night behind a dumpster.

Imogen took a breath, checked the gun, and steadied herself. She had an advantage here that she didn't in the training exercises because she'd seen where he was standing already. Surely, _surely_ , she could make this shot.

Determined, she picked herself up, swung around the dumpster, and fired. _One, two, three_ , shot at an even tempo. By some miracle, two hit him right in the chest, one somewhere amidst his ribs (which was _not_ where she'd been aiming, but at least she'd hit her target), and the other lower down in his stomach. The third whizzed over his head as he dropped like a stone, a wet gargle escaping his mouth.

Astounded that she had actually done it, Imogen just stood there and stared; until he started shooting back wildly, making her duck and dive behind the dumpster again. A bullet grazed her arm as she fell, pain blooming across her skin, and then her shoulder found the pavement and jarred her whole body. That would hurt tomorrow, she thought to herself as she curled up well out of the path of any other bullets and waited for him to stop.

It didn't take long for the gun to clutter to the pavement and the man to go silent. She dared a glance around the dumpster again, and only looked long enough to confirm he wasn't going to be a problem anymore. Then, she turned and went the other way, pulling herself up and over a brick wall to avoid having to come any closer to him. She would never get used to dead people.

Home free, she finally stopped to wonder if Ruby had made it away safe, and what they would do to her if they caught her. HYDRA were killers, and would take her out without a second thought if that was the mood they were in, but INTEL had a high price on her head, if Ruby's superstitions were to be believed. And if they gave her to INTEL, Imogen had a whole other problem.

She wasn't in the habit of making promises. Especially ones she couldn't keep. But Ruby had demanded that she make one the day she'd turned up at Imogen's apartment door and announced that they were both after an organisation it would take more than one person to bring down. _Don't let them take me back_ , she'd said, after she'd convinced Imogen that they needed to work together. _You have to promise me, they won't take me back_. _You have to promise that you'll help me to_.

And Imogen had promised, though she knew that if HYDRA or INTEL took Ruby, she'd be hard pressed to find a way to get her out. Though she knew that if the time came, like it had now, she'd feel obliged to go after Ruby, and guilty if she couldn't.

But there was nothing she could do right now, so she just kept running.

The news was still on when she got home, muttering away to the dark and empty apartment. One of these days she would learn to turn it off before she left. Maybe. In truth, she liked the background noise of it when she was alone, especially on days like this when Clint stole Lucky from her for a while.

She had the remote in her hand to turn it off when she paused to read the breaking news headline, and stopped herself short. _Orizon Pharmaceuticals Massacre_ it read, right underneath a helicopter view of a skyscraper in downtown New York. The live feed of the building from afar was not very informative, showing nothing but an ordinary tower and occasionally glimpses of police cars and large crowds scattered on the streets below.

She sunk down onto the couch. Orizon was the company that was supposed to be delivering to INTEL. She'd only just read the text Ruby had sent her before HYDRA had gotten involved in their meeting. There was supposed to be a delivery going on right now, though she hadn't bothered tracking them down – she'd had a close enough encounter with HYDRA to suit her liking, and if they'd known who had hacked them and where to find her, there's a better chance of a strike team waiting for her at that warehouse than a mysterious delivery.

 _Over 200 dead_ , popped up under the major headline, drawing her eyes back to the TV. _No survivors_.

She turned it up, just in time for the hourly recap. "If you're just joining us," a reporter said as the camera switched to a shot of her at the police perimeter around the building. "We're currently at the scene of the mass shooting that occurred at Orizon Pharmaceuticals in New York this afternoon. The identity of the shooter or shooters is currently unknown, as are their motives; police have not ruled out an act of terrorism, but there are also rumours that the company had ties to subversive intelligence organisation HYDRA, who of course were responsible for the destruction in DC several months ago.

"We do know that at 4:51pm, heavy gunfire was heard within the Orizon building, and at least two separate explosions. No one was seen entering or exiting the building before or after this event. Police responded quickly to multiple calls to 911 and secured the area around the building, and have since entered the building, but have yet to find any trace of the killers. So far, at least two hundred and twenty victims have been found and confirmed deceased, though this number is unconfirmed. It looks like there are no survivors." Her voice is detached, but her face is pale and she is shaking, just barely putting up a brave front for the camera. The channel switched to another woman in a studio before she could fall apart completely, and Imogen leant back and stopped listening.

Even for a company that is HYDRA, two hundred is a _lot_ of people.

Were they all HYDRA? Ruby had only said that they were giving Orizon funding, not that they _were_ HYDRA. And the strike team had come after them because she had hacked their accounts, not Orizon's. She had a feeling most of the company didn't know who they really worked for. Which meant that if this was some kind of hit on HYDRA, like she suspected it might be, there were a lot of innocent people who had gotten caught up in the crossfire.

She considered calling Clint, to see what the Avengers knew, but he'd just want to know what she was doing up so late (or early, by this point), and if she told him about Ruby she'd have to tell him about HYDRA chasing them, and then he'd just get worried. It had happened before - she'd originally tried to get his help in tracking down INTEL, but they had disappeared and HYDRA had appeared in their place and he'd told her to stop. If she wanted INTEL, she had to do it herself, and she couldn't tell Clint.

Yawning, she realised suddenly that she was way too tired to care about someone massacring HYDRA anyway. If they _were_ killing HYDRA and not just terrorists going after whatever they could find. Either way, she could do some more digging in the morning, when she could actually think straight.


	3. Out Of Containment

_A/N: please don't forget to review if you're enjoying reading :)_

 _also I'm having some trouble with like, scene breaks the website has decided I'm not allowed to have them which is dumb because if I don't want their ugly 'horizontal lines' I shouldn't have to have them anyway if you see something weird that is not my fault I'm trying my best to fix it lol_

 **3: Out Of Containment**

They were sat in a 24-hour diner a few hours away from New York when she finally tracked them down, just the two of them. It was a seedy kind of place at night, visited only by drunks and tired drivers and the creepier characters of the nearby town. The pair wouldn't have fit in, with their clean shirts and shiny laptop if she hadn't known who they worked for.

Lena was almost relieved to see them. She'd been looking for them for months, but until now they'd had a full team to help them avoid being tracked down. It was only now, when they were beaten and picked off down to two people and so exhausted that the guy on the computer wasn't even paying attention to what he was doing, that she'd been able to find them.

The little bell above the door rang as she walked in, announcing her presence. The guy behind the counter didn't even look up from his phone, but Will did as an automatic response. His eyes were clouded and heavy with exhaustion, but the moment he recognised her he came alert, hand creeping towards the gun he kept hidden on his person.

She strode across the room and promptly slid into the seat next to his computer guy before he could start shooting, running her eyes over the other two customers in the room. They didn't even look up, and neither did the computer guy, eyes glued to the screen like he was in a trance.

"You two should really get some sleep," she said in way of greeting, leaning back comfortably.

"We've got bigger problems, apparently," Will quipped in reply. "What do you want, Lena?"

"Oh, this and that." She waved a hand in the air. "Nice to see you, by the way. We've been trying to track you all over the country. I was hoping you'd have a full team when I found you, but apparently I sorely underestimated your skills as a leader." She turned to eye Computer Guy critically. He still didn't look up.

"Murphy," Will barked, and the tech kid bolted upright like he'd been electrocuted. When he saw Lena's hand resting on the table he jumped again, almost smacking his head into the window in his rush to get away from her.

"What the-" He rubbed at his eyes and then squinted at her, like he wasn't sure she was real. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"New York," Lena answered smugly. Will sighed and slip a mug of coffee across the table.

"My team would still be alive if it weren't for the higher-ups losing control of a valuable weapon," he said as Murphy chugged down half a cup of coffee in record time. "It's been after everyone in HYDRA. It's probably on its way after us now." He paused to glance out the window, like he might see the weapon walking down the street. "You'd better make this quick unless you want to end up collateral damage."

"Weapon?" She had a pretty good idea what he was afraid of. "You mean the Fist of HYDRA? Your escaped Asset?"

"How do you know about that?" he demanded.

Lena laughed. "Please, everything about HYDRA is on the internet these days. Everyone knows about him. I hear even Captain America is trying to track him down."

"What happened to your face?" Murphy interrupted, finished his coffee and back to staring at her again.

"Is he drunk?" she directed at Will.

"No." He was staring now too, at the blotchy burn marks that covered her face in a vaguely hand-shaped scar. Most of it had faded after it healed but several spots would never go away, particularly the large one on her left cheek, where her skin had been frozen off and then blasted by the explosion that had destroyed her main base of operations.

" _Anyway_ ," she continued, desperate to drag their attention onto something else. "I believe your Asset is the one that killed all of the personnel belonging to one of our most important trade partners. By doing so, he has cut off our access to a product that is not available anywhere else."

"And what does this have to do with us, exactly?" Will asked impatiently. Murphy slid the almost-empty coffee cup back across the table without looking up.

Lena shrugged. "Your team have done some good work with us in the past, and you look like you're in need of a new job. I'd like to offer you one."

Will's eyes narrowed. "What do you want in return?"

"I have a mission that needs doing, and I think you're the best man to lead it." She paused, and he grabbed the coffee, resigning himself to having to wheedle it out of her.

Before he could ask though, she continued. "We are mutual friends, I believe, of a girl by the name of Imogen Haylock?"

"My sister?" Will said with some surprise. "I thought you had her locked up in your secret cave of horrors. Or that she was dead. Didn't your entire operation explode a week after you took her from our camp that one time?"

"She's alive," Lena informed him grimly, touching the scar on her cheek. "One of our scientists helped her escape, and rigged his lab to blow. We couldn't pursue her then for obvious reasons, but we have since found traces of her in New York."

"So, what, you want me to track her down and bring her back to you?"

"Her, and a few others."

It was Will's turn to laugh. "And why wouldn't I just take her back to HYDRA, where there is a death sentence on her head and has been since before you laid a hand on her?"

"Because HYDRA is dying," Lena told him bluntly. "And I don't think you want your sister dead with them, even if you pretend you don't care. Besides, it would be a shame to waste something like Item 548 on something stupid like revenge."

Will froze, and then forced himself to relax. "Of course you know," he muttered to himself. "Is that why you kidnapped her? For a science experiment?"

"Not how I would put it but yes, essentially."

"And what are you going to do with her once your adventure into my mother's theoretical cryogenics is finished?" he pressed. "Kill her? At least HYDRA will make it quick."

Lena smiled and shook her head. "By the time we're finished, Imogen Haylock will be ready to join our ranks as one of the best soldiers at our disposal."

Will snorted in derision. "Have you ever even met Imogen? She'll never be convinced to join you, especially not now that she's loyal to Barton and the Avengers. And she's far from the brilliant fighter you think she'll be."

"There are ways around loyalty," Lena said, dismissing his concerns. "As for her skills…well, your mother's research will help with that. I can explain it all later, if you want."

Will paused to wonder how cryogenics had anything to do with fighting – and why Lena was so interested in such inane research when, for as long as he had known her, she'd been solely focused on finding a reliable way to produced enhanced individuals to strengthen her forces.

His thoughts were disrupted when Murphy yawned and closed the laptop in front of him, staring mournfully at the empty coffee cup. "Sounds like a decent gig," he said offhandedly.

"Were you even listening?" Will asked doubtfully. It had been impossible to get more than two words through to Murphy since they'd entered the diner, let alone a whole conversation he hadn't taken part in.

"I got the important bits," Murphy claimed. "Sister, experiments, money if we bring her in." He faltered for a moment, looking like he might just drift off to sleep right there and then. "No more Winter Soldier on our tails."

"You really want to work for someone else?" Will asked.

Murphy shrugged. "We've done stuff for INTEL before," he reasoned. "And it's not like we have anything else going for us."

Will shook his head, but he couldn't find a reason to turn her down. "Fine," he acquiesced, turning to Lena. "We'll do it. But I'm picking my own team, and if we decide to leave before it's over, you're going to let us go and not ask questions."

"Of course," Lena agreed, standing and smoothing out her button-down shirt. She wore cargo pants below it, and military-issue boots – a conspicuous sort of fashion for a diner where everyone was wearing hoodies and beat up sneakers, but somehow she managed not to stand out.

At a final nod from Murphy, who was probably too tired to know or care what he was getting himself into, both men stood and followed her outside to a dark van not unlike the ones SHIELD had favoured back in their time. A second woman stood by the open door, arms crossed and face pinched in what looked like anger but might just have been her normal expression. Her skin was the colour of sodden earth, and her eyes were even darker as they glared at each of them in turn, framed by a mess of springy curls.

If she could fight as well as she glared, Will decided, she was on his team.

"If we were kids, do you think they'd give us candy?" Murphy muttered, eyeing the van suspiciously.

Suddenly finding himself the one too tired to care, Will shrugged and climbed in, Murphy right on his heels; scared in by Lena's backup, probably. The door slammed shut behind him, and just like that, they were officially working for INTEL.

"I'm glad you agreed to help us," Lena said from the front seat, as if she'd read his mind. "I don't think you'll regret it, once you see what we're working on."

Will didn't doubt it.

oooooooooo

There was a party on when Imogen returned home from her daily run. The music could be heart from the street below, blasting out of someone's apartment or maybe one of the hallways and wafting down to the street below as she let herself in. Imogen was unsurprised at the gathering – the tenants of Clint's building were unusually sociable and impromptu gatherings on the rooftop were just part of living there.

As usual, the whole building had come alive, from the front door to the rooftop. The old lady in the first apartment on the ground floor had her door wide open and was sitting in the living room with her sewing, 40's band music drifting from an old CD player. Across the hall, the kids from upstairs were playing with the kids from downstairs. They rushed up the staircase in front of her, taking Lucky with them.

The second floor was quiet, but halfway up the stairs to the third she found Tito and Deke fixing the steps that had splintered under the kids thundering feet over the last couple of weeks. She skirted around their hammering, waved to Deke's girlfriend through the open door to his apartment, and followed the kids up the last flight to her own.

Simone's place, across the hall from hers, was just as empty as the second floor, though the door stood ajar and there was a pot of something that smelt delicious bubbling slowly over on her stove. Imogen let herself into her own apartment long enough to shower quickly and find a change of clean clothes, and then she headed up to the roof to see what had sparked this particular gathering.

There was a small crowd up there, smiling and laughing in the late afternoon sunshine. They were all huddled near the grill when she came up, watching Clint clamber down over the side of the building to retrieve the arrow he'd put through Simone's satellite dish almost a year ago. "He better not fall," Imogen heard Aimee mutter to her roommate Sara, two of the tenants from the second floor. Sara just hummed in agreement, too busy watching their landlord pull off a death-defying stunt for the sake of Simone's TV channels.

A moment later the arrow dropped victoriously to the ground next to the wall, and then Clint himself vaulted up and over and back onto the roof. It would have been cool, if he hadn't stumbled and almost fallen on the landing.

"About time that thing stopped messin' with my TV," Simone said in satisfaction, as one of her boys darted behind Clint and snatched the arrow up.

"Really glad you didn't fall off the building," Aimee added cheerfully.

"Nah, Hawkguy'd never fall," Imogen heard Grills put in, right as there was a tap on her shoulder.

She turned, and came face-to-face with a boy with silver hair and a lazy grin. He looked vaguely familiar – the boy from the medical wing of the Tower, she remembered suddenly, whose sister Clint had been keeping a close eye on the last couple of weeks. She hadn't even realised he had woken up, much less that they'd let him out of medical, she'd been so busy chasing dead leads on Ruby and HYDRA and INTEL.

"Uh," was all she could think of to say. "Hi."

" _Sveiki_ ," he replied.

Her eyes narrowed. "Do you speak English?"

"What?" He frowned. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because you're speaking another language?" she pointed out slowly.

He stopped to think about it, and then shrugged. "I don't like English."

"Oh." She hesitated, tried to think of something else to say, and then wondered why she was still talking to him. "Okay. Bye." She turned and walked away before he could keep talking to her.

Not that it mattered how fast she left, because a moment later he was standing in front of her again, having moved impossibly fast across the short distance. His appearance was so sudden that she almost walked right into him; at the last second she stopped and rocked back on her heels in surprise.

"Alright so-" She stopped to compose herself. "You move fast."

"Maybe you are just slow," he shot back, not missing a beat.

"No." She paused and looked around at all the people moving at normal speed to prove her point. "Pretty sure you're just fast. You're an Avenger, right?"

"Oh!" His face lit up. "You are Clint's friend. Imogen."

She eyed him speculatively. "And you're that guy that got shot like twenty times in Sokovia," she said dryly.

"How do you know that?"

It was her turn to smile. "Clint told me."

"Clint told you what?" The man in question came striding up happily, the arrow the kids had stolen earlier twirling between his fingers.

"Nothing," Imogen replied. "What're you doing here?"

"My land-lordly duty," Clint said, puffing out his chest. "Fixin' stuff, listening to the complaints of the people…." He relaxed back into his usual slouch. "I see you found Pietro. Has he gotten himself in trouble yet?"

She shrugged. "No more than everyone else."

"And _I_ found _her_ ," Pietro put in loftily.

"Why'd he come with you?" Imogen added, rolling her eyes at him.

"He's decided to ignore his doctor's advice and pretend he's not injured and it's annoying everyone at the Tower," Clint explained. "I told him he could come with me if he promised to stop trying to drive everyone to madness."

"I am not," Pietro protested. "And I am allowed to go places and do things if I want to."

"No, you're not," Clint shot back, rounding on him. "You're supposed to be on _bed rest._ We agreed that you're not supposed to go _anywhere_ for at least a week."

"You and _Wanda_ agreed," Pietro said unhappily.

"Only because you wouldn't," Clint replied.

Pietro huffed an unhappy sigh. " _Nē taisnīga_ ," he mumbled under his breath before he stalked off back across the rooftop, at normal speed this time.

Clint watched him go, and then shook his head and turned back to Imogen. "While I'm here, I need to talk to you about something."

"What about?" Imogen asked, just as three kids came flying past to lay claim to Grills' sausages.

"Did you see the thing about Orizon? The pharmacy place in Manhatten?" he asked, pulling her further away from the grill and the crowd to a spot where they were well out of earshot.

"Yeah," she replied, not sure why he wanted to talk about that in particular. "They were all HYDRA, weren't they?"

"They were," he confirmed. A worried line drew itself across his forehead. "You're not worried at all that HYDRA are in New York?"

"They _were_ in New York," she corrected him. "And now they're all dead so, no, not really."

"If there's a whole company of HYDRA agents, there will be more smaller groups around," Clint insisted.

Imogen shrugged. "Seems like they have bigger problems than me to deal with at the moment," she reasoned. "If there's someone going around cleaning up HYDRA bases a few hundred agents at a time, I think we're pretty safe."

"And if _those_ people aren't on our side?"

She stared at him for a minute. "You know, you haven't been much fun since you got back from Sokovia."

"I'm just trying to keep you safe," he told her. "HYDRA are dangerous Imogen. Especially to you, living out here in an apartment building."

"So what am I supposed to do, go into hiding because HYDRA might finally come looking for some low-ranking nobody that ditched them a year ago?"

"The best place to be is the tower," Clint answered, and he was completely serious.

"Clint, I'm not moving." He opened his mouth to argue, but she shook her head and hurried on before he could get a word out. "I am not running away from HYDRA just because they _might_ come after me while they're busy being systematically wiped from the face of the earth. They've ruined my life enough, haven't they? If anything, I should be going after _them_."

Clint looked like he might continue to argue, but then he sighed and slumped in defeat. "Stay out of trouble then," he said reluctantly. "And remember that I think you're making a really bad decision." She had a feeling this was not going to be the last time they had this conversation.

"Alright, Hawkmum," she replied, rolling her eyes at him.

Clint looked confused. "Hawk _what_?"

"Hawkmum," she repeated. "Because you're nagging me like a 40 year old soccer mum."

"I am not a soccer mum," he said, looking horrified at the very idea.

"Sure you aren't," she said sarcastically. Shaking her head, Imogen turned back to the rest of the gathering, silently wondering if maybe she'd made a mistake being so stubborn about moving.


	4. The New Kids

_A/N: Sorry for the lack of updates, for some reason parts of this were just super hard to write and I've been busy showing horses and doing music stuff lol. Hopefully I'll be back on the almost-regular updating schedule soon :) Please remember to review!_

oooooooooo

 **4: The New Kids**

She spent another four days looking for Ruby by herself, both online and in the real world. Nothing turned up. Online was always going to be a bust – the thing about hackers was that their accounts and files were always locked up tight, and unless they left you a way in for emergencies, only a better hacker could help you. In the real world, Imogen had an address, a phone number, and their old meeting place that was probably now under HYDRA surveillance in case either of them came back. All three came up empty anyway – no one in or out of her apartment in weeks, nothing but builders at their meeting place, and no texts or calls from her number. Either Ruby had gone deep underground, or HYDRA had caught her.

It was only on the fourth day, over two weeks after Ruby had disappeared, that she even thought of using JARVIS – well, FRIDAY now. Did it matter? As far as she could tell, they were the same program. She'd used JARVIS sparingly in the past, when Ruby had failed to come up with anything useful on the leads they'd been chasing. She didn't dare use him for all of the work though, not when there was no way to tell if his privacy setting was actually private (she was still pretty sure Stark had access to everything JARVIS heard or saw, whether it was supposed to be private or not), but he was more than useful for the odd thing or two they just couldn't quite figure out.

She went through the front this time, the Stark Industries reception, purposely pushing right through the middle of a group of cosplaying Avengers fangirls. Female Captain America turned and gave her a look of icy hatred that Steve Rogers would never have been able to pull off. Female Hawkeye was too busy staring at her shirt to join in. Apparently, she liked Hawkeye t-shirts just as much as dressing up as him. Idly, Imogen wondered what she would do if she knew Hawkeye was the one that bought her the shirt.

The receptionists let her through without a second glance, thanks to FRIDAY and the magic of facial recognition. As the elevator closed she caught a glimpse of Female Captain America through the glass front of the building. Her glare had gotten even more intense, somehow. Imogen resisted the urge to wave.

"JARV – uh, FRIDAY?" she asked the empty elevator once she was well on her way up the building.

"Yes, Miss Haylock?" the Irish AI replied smoothly.

"You have a privacy mode like JARVIS used to, right?"

"I have all the functions JARVIS does," the AI confirmed. "Would you like me to switch to privacy mode?"

"Yes," Imogen said, and then waited a beat. "I need you to find a girl called Ruby Radford."

"Is there anything else I should-" The elevator stopped and a portly businessman in a suit stepped on, glancing at her in disdain before pushing the button for an office level two floors up. The AI remained silent. Annoyed, Imogen glared at the man's back and wished he would have just taken the stairs. He could do with the exercise, from the size of his stomach.

The elevator dinged and opened to his floor. He shot Imogen one more disgusted glance as he got off, and then finally he was gone.

"Who was _he_?" she asked the AI as the elevator started moving again.

"That was Robert Price, a major share-holder of Strata Networks," FRIDAY answered. "Are there any other details I should include in my search for Miss Radford?"

Imogen hesitated. "She's a hacker, so you could look for her online, and she lives in an apartment in the Bronx. The address is on my phone. There's a picture of her there too. You can get that stuff, right?"

"I already have. I will search right away," the AI promised, just as the doors opened on the Avenger's common area.

The room seemed empty at first glance. And then a voice right next to her asked, "What are you looking for?"

Imogen jumped and stumbled out of the elevator in shock, turning to face Pietro, who was the last person she'd expected to see today. He was in the elevator, leaning back against the wall with a grin that gave her the impression he was laughing at her.

"You know it's rude to spy on people, right?" she grumbled, trying hard to regain some of her dignity.

"I wasn't _spying_ ," he said, and stepped out of the elevator too fast for her to see. "Just passing. What were you talking about?"

He was behind her again, forcing her to turn to face him. "It's none of your business." Abruptly, she decided she was done with this conversation and pushed past him, stalking off towards the kitchen.

He was back at her side faster than was humanly possible. "Are you an Avenger?" he asked, falling into step beside her.

"No," she snapped, wishing she could shake him.

"You look like an Avenger," he informed her.

She eyed him speculatively. "Is there a specific _look_ Avengers have?"

He shrugged. "Pretty face, American, living in a big city. And the old man says he is teaching you to fight."

"Not all the Avengers are American," she pointed out, and chose to ignore the rest of it.

"They might as well be." From his voice, she got the idea that he didn't hold a very high opinion of America.

"Aren't _you_ an Avenger?" she asked.

" _No_ ," he replied, very definitely.

Imogen struggled for a response, but abandoned the mission as she entered the kitchen. He wasn't forthcoming with any more information, and she didn't care enough to ask. She made a beeline for the fridge instead; she'd made the mistake of not eating lunch before she came to the Tower and she'd hoped maybe she'd be able to filch food out of the kitchen here. The fridge was all but empty though, and so were most of the cupboards, except for a few boxes of cereal and several jars of jam and spreads (and no bread to put them on).

"What are you looking for?" Pietro asked as she closed the last cupboard and resigned herself to cereal for lunch.

Imogen paused on her way back to the breakfast cupboard. "Food?" she replied, like it was obvious. "Not that there's any _left_ in here. If you're making a list of requirements to be an Avenger, you should add 'big eater' to the list."

"Why don't you go down to the city and buy food?"

"Because I don't want to spend money on food," she explained.

His face lit up, like a lightbulb switching on over the top of his head. "If you will help me get out of this tower, I will buy you food out there?" he proposed, waving a hand towards the windows, which boasted a stunning view of the buildings of Manhattan and Central Park in the distance.

She was focused on him rather than the view. " _Help you get out_?" she repeated suspiciously. "What does that mean?"

"The old man, he will not let me leave," he complained, and Imogen silently cursed herself for falling into that trap. "Keeps saying I should rest, but I do not need rest. I want to _do_ something."

"Yeah, that sounds like terrible advice to give someone that was basically dead a couple weeks ago," she said, rolling her eyes.

He frowned. "How do you know that?"

"I'm friends with Clint," she reminded him, gesturing towards her Hawkeye t-shirt. "He spent a lot of time in Medical waiting for you to wake up."

"Oh." He grew still for almost five seconds, thinking about it, and then sprung back to life again. "So? We will go?"

She rolled her eyes again, but considered it. They were guaranteed to get into trouble at some point during his hare-brained scheme to 'escape' from the Avengers, which she wasn't really looking forward to. But she _was_ hungry for more than just cereal, and maybe if she busted him out for the fifteen minutes it would take to find a café and order food, he would stop following her around.

"Fine," she relented, much to his delight. As she left the kitchen, she noticed a growing red stain on his shirt. "You'll have to stop bleeding first though."

He looked down in surprise, apparently not having noticed he was bleeding at all. " _Izdrust_ ," he said, which sounded a lot like swearing, and lifted his shirt.

A wound dressing covered the entire left side of his lower abdomen; carefully, he peeled the blood-soaked pad of cotton away to reveal two small bullet wounds that looked like they'd recently had stitches removed, and were currently red and angry and bleeding.

"What the-" Imogen stuttered to a halt as he wandered over to the bin, dropping the dressings into it. "Why are you even walking around with two bullet holes in your stomach?"

"Two?" He scoffed. "I have more than two. These ones just bleed the most."

"No one in this place knows anything about medical care," she muttered to herself, like she wasn't just as bad as the rest of them, as she went back to the kitchen for the first aid kit that was kept there.

"I know plenty of things," he called after her, just for the sake of arguing.

Imogen ignored him until she got back, dropping the medical kit on the table next to him. "If you know so much, you can bandage yourself up," she told him smugly.

"You do not want to do it for me?" he replied, just as smug.

Her eyes narrowed. "I'll get you a shirt," she said, and left the room before she could lose any more verbal battles.

Clint's room was conveniently close to the common room, and his clothes were always kept on the floor rather than in drawers or cupboards, so she just borrowed a shirt from him rather than bothering to go and find someone to ask for one. Like a complete dork, he owned a bunch of Hawkeye shirts just for himself, and she made sure to grab one of those rather than any of the plain, discreet ones that were scattered around the place. She'd been thinking it was sort of unfair that he hadn't bought these new kids his own shirts yet, but this would more than make up for it.

When she returned, Pietro had already disposed of his old shirt and was almost done covering up his wounds again. She might have noticed then that he was attractive, but she was too busy staring at the _other_ bullet holes that she hadn't noticed before.

She counted six fresh bullet wounds straight out, not including the two that were just bleeding. Some were stitched and covered in gauze and tape, while others were almost healed, just ugly lines in his skin. The more she looked, the more bullets she could count – and that was only the ones she _could_ see.

"How-?" she began, but stopped short when he grabbed the shirt out of her hands.

"Metal men," he answered shortly. "Guns." With some difficulty, he pulled the shirt over his head and suddenly they were all gone again, except for one angry scar on his wrist. "Ask your friend Mr Stark." He sounded angry, but it wasn't directed at her. Briefly, she wondered if that was the only fight he wanted to pick with Tony Stark.

Her empty stomach chose that moment to remind her of her priorities. "Are you sure you should be going out with… _that_?" she asked, gesturing towards his stomach.

"I _want_ to leave," he told her firmly. "I think that is enough, no?"

Imogen considered again ditching him and going alone, or staying and eating cereal instead, but ended up shrugging and agreeing anyway. If he collapsed on the sidewalk or something, she decided, it wasn't her fault.

"This way, then," she said, and turned promptly on her heel towards the elevator.

"That is no use," Pietro said, trailing after her. "The computer, she will not let me go."

"Well, I don't know how else you think we're going to get downstairs," Imogen snapped back. "I'm not taking the stairs just for you." Pietro's face twisted unhappily as she hit the button to call the elevator. "You're not the only one Clint has tried to trap in here before. Don't worry about it."

He still didn't look happy, but he didn't argue any further, just followed her into the elevator and watched her push the button for the ground floor.

"Mr Maximoff is not permitted to leave this building," FRIDAY said as the doors slid closed, holding the elevator still.

"He's not leaving," Imogen replied. "Just going down to the ground floor and back with me."

"Your previous conversation suggests-"

"It's rude to spy on people, FRIDAY," she interrupted impatiently. "And you can't tell me Clint banned Pietro specifically from going down to the ground floor."

The AI went silent for a long moment, and then finally the elevator hummed to life. "If Mr Maximoff tries to leave the building, I will have to inform Mr Barton," she informed them as they began to move.

Imogen thanked the heavens for Clint's lousy instruction-giving and the computer's ability to exploit loopholes. "Report away," she muttered, reminding herself once again that the blame was solely on Pietro when Clint inevitably caught up with them.

"You-" Pietro stopped himself short before he could say anything incriminating. Like FRIDAY didn't know exactly what they were doing. Imogen didn't bother letting him know it was safe to talk. The silence was much too welcome.

The AI reluctantly let them out at the ground floor, with just one more warning about Pietro leaving the building. "How did you trick it?" he asked as they escaped into the busy reception of Stark Industries.

"There's no way Clint left actual clear instructions," Imogen replied. "I just pointed out the loopholes. Tony told me how to do it last time _I_ was locked up in there with an injury."

Pietro said something in response but she stopped listening as she looked to the left and spotted Female Captain America again, staring at them through the glass. Female Hawkeye was still right by her side, and she was almost better at staring than the other one. The group hadn't budged since she'd last seen them; like they were expecting an Avenger to use the public entrance to the Tower.

And then she remembered who she was with. "No one would recognise you as an Avenger, right?" she asked Pietro, watching the fan group out of the corner of her eye.

"I am not an Avenger," he said, and she immediately stopped to turn and look at him with a disapproving glare. "What? I am not. Why would it matter anyway?"

Imogen rolled her eyes and went back to not looking at him. "Maybe because the Avengers are minor celebrities, and being stalked by weirdos like _them_ -" She paused to jerk a thumb at Female Captain America and her friends, "-isn't my idea of fun?"

He shot a curious glance at the fangirls. "What, you are scared of some girls?" he teased.

"I'm not-" Imogen stopped, forced herself to take a deep breath, and then gave up. "Whatever. If they mob you, I'm leaving you here to die," she said instead. "Clint can rescue you."

" _Fine,_ we will stay away from them," he grumbled, and moved so fast to grab the door that for a second he was nothing but a blue blur in front of her. She was pretty sure now that super speed was his thing – she'd seen enough bad superhero movies and met enough Avengers now to figure it out for herself, even if he hadn't explicitly told her – and that he wasn't afraid to flaunt it, even in places where it would only bring him strife. Idly, she wondered what kind of powers his sister wielded, because there was no way she was normal if he was like this.

To her chagrin, Female Captain America was waiting for them outside the door, a pasty smile stuck to her face. The rest of her gang hung back, close enough to witness the drama but far enough away that they could pretend not to have anything to do with it. "Excuse me," she said to Pietro, purposefully ignoring Imogen. "Are you – were you in Sokovia? With the Avengers?"

"Why would I have been in Sokovia?" Pietro said slowly.

Female Hawkeye stepped forward to even out the odds. "Nice accent," she said with a smile that was much more genuine than the other girl's.

" _Mulțumiri_ ," he replied, and of course he couldn't just say it in English.

"Sounds like Sokovian," Female Captain America added suspiciously.

Another girl came up, this one with tiny cardboard wings painted black and red sticking out from behind her back and a pair of goggles perched on her forehead. "You look like that guy who died saving that kid," she blurted out before the others could stop her.

Pietro froze, and Imogen decided then that she was done with this whole thing. "Alright, I'll be back later to say 'I told you so'," she said abruptly to Pietro and stepped away. "Tell Clint to text me if I have to buy flowers for your grave."

"What?" Pietro said but she was already walking away as fast as she could. They wouldn't _maul_ him or anything. And Clint would be down soon to usher him back into the safety of the Tower.

Though she'd decided she didn't care anymore, she couldn't help but look back as she reached the corner of the Tower. To her surprise, the girls were all milling around in confusion.

She figured it out just as she ran into someone who was directly in front of her. Imogen turned back around as Pietro staggered sideways, catching himself with the help of a nearby wall. He was doubled over and breathing in short, sharp gasps, clutching at his side.

"What the _hell_?" she exclaimed, not really sure how to help him.

"This was not…a good idea…" he managed to choke out between breaths.

"What, letting you come out here? Obviously."

He pulled himself up straight just so that he could give her a withering look. "If you had not left me, I would have been fine."

"No," she interrupted, holding up a finger. "I warned you. This has nothing to do with me."

"That is not what Clint will say when he finds us," Pietro argued. "When he walks out that door in a few seconds."

Imogen stared at him. "Whatever," she said with a shake of her head. "I'm going to get lunch." For the second time today, she pushed past him and walked away down the street.

Not to be outdone, he followed doggedly, still breathing hard. What was it an indication of, she wondered, that he was so obviously putting himself in pain just to be out of the Tower? That he was born to be an Avenger, probably. None of them were capable of waiting for an injury to heal before they started pushing themselves again.

"Why do these people like the Avengers so much?" he asked as they turned a corner and headed towards Central Park.

"They've saved the world like, three times," she reasoned, spotting a café just up the street. "There was an alien invasion right here on these streets, so…"

"The places that they leave behind do not think they are heroes."

"New York doesn't mind them."

He shook his head. "Only because they live here."

Imogen ducked inside the café and he followed. It was a busy little place, but quick, the people behind the counter taking orders and running out coffees in record time. "You say that like you don't like them," she commented as they joined the line.

"I don't," he agreed.

"Then why did you join?"

"I haven't decided yet," he corrected her. "About joining."

"What about your sister?"

His face darkened. "She says she is an Avenger now. But I think she will not stay."

Imogen didn't know what to say to that, so she just fell silent, waiting for their turn to order. She'd just chosen one sandwich (and Pietro two), when he told her, "I do not have money, by the way."

"I thought we agreed you were paying," she threw at him, already reaching for her own cash (which was technically Clint's seeing as she had yet to find a job or career or really anything related to money that she wanted to do).

"Maybe I will another day," he said as she paid.

She grabbed the sandwiches off the counter. "What, when you refuse to join the Avengers and you're unemployed and probably deported? Sure."

"Deported?"

Imogen nodded. "You can't tell me you're a citizen of the United States."

"Why would you think that?" he asked, feigning innocence.

She pushed him towards an empty table outside the café, dropping down into the chair across from his. "Other than the accent and the unemployment, you were basically dead about a week ago." He was too busy unwrapping a sandwich to reply so she abandoned the conversation and began eating her own, but she barely got two bites in before a shadow fell across her and she was forced to look up to see who had disturbed them.

Clint stood over them, of course, lording it up with sunglasses and his hands stuck in the pockets of a shiny new leather jacket someone had bought for him. "I'd better call Tony and tell him his AI is broken," he said dryly. "I'm sure I remember telling her to make him stay put." He jerked his head at Pietro, who was doing his best to ignore the archer's existence.

"You told her not to let him out of the building," Imogen said between bites. "But you never said he couldn't go down to the ground floor."

Clint visibly deflated. "I hate computers," he muttered childishly. She laughed and took another bite of her sandwich. "I didn't even know you two were friends."

"We're not," Imogen corrected him through a mouthful of food.

"I said I would buy her a sandwich," Pietro explained, and he sounded way too pleased with himself.

"So after meeting for like five minutes a week ago, you bonded over causing me pain and ran away together?" Clint surmised in a dry voice.

"Don't make it sound like a crappy romance novel," Imogen sighed.

"You betrayed me," he shot back. "I'll do whatever I like."

She rolled her eyes and went back to her sandwich, not deigning to answer. "You worry too much, old man," Pietro said, when it became clear she wasn't going to say anything more.

"I don't worry _enough_ ," Clint corrected him. "The doctors said to _rest_ , Pietro. That doesn't include wandering off down the street or accidentally bleeding out in front of that group of girls outside the Tower."

Pietro scoffed. "I am not even bleeding," he said and gestured towards his stomach, which was a very bad idea.

Clint frowned. "Why are you wearing that shirt?"

Pietro looked down at the faded Hawkeye symbol emblazoned across his chest and shrugged. "She gave it to me." He pointed across the table to Imogen, who scowled back.

"He was bleeding," she added when Clint's gaze turned to her. She only felt a little guilty about throwing him under the bus.

" _Izdrust_ ," Pietro muttered. She could feel his eyes on her but steadfastly ignored him.

"This is why you're supposed to rest," Clint began with what sounded like a lecture. "And _you_ -" Without warning, he turned on Imogen. "What are you doing bringing him out here?"

She wasn't cowed by his accusations. "I was hungry, and he said he'd buy me lunch," she replied bluntly. "Which was a lie anyway, but whatever."

"Do you go out with every random boy that offers to buy you a sandwich?" he demanded.

"You know him!" she pointed out in exasperation. "He's not in very good shape to murder me. And anyway, you can't just keep people locked up in the Tower. It's a free country."

"It's for his own good," Clint insisted. Behind him, Pietro pulled a face.

"Well, you'll be happy to know I'm never doing it again," Imogen said as she finished off her sandwich and leaned back in her chair. "This has been way too much trouble to be worth it."

"Good," the archer said firmly, but he didn't sound completely satisfied. His arms were still crossed, and he had an unhappy look on his face that seemed to have become permanent sometime in the last twenty minutes. Or perhaps it had become a fixture during the last few weeks and Imogen just hadn't noticed; he had been in a dark mood since Sokovia.

"We're going home now," he said abruptly, before she could come to any conclusions. Pietro's face darkened as he said it, but Clint was onto him immediately. "Don't even think about arguing. It's for your own good."

"I think I can decide what is good for me," Pietro protested.

"No you can't." Clint dragged him up out of his chair and shoved his remaining sandwich into his hands. "Come on, Imogen." Sighing, she got up and followed them, watching from behind as Pietro muttered something under his breath and then threw off Clint's grip on his arm. Clint replied – she didn't quite catch the words – and something he said made the boy pull a face and drop back to walk with her instead.

"Maybe we should run away," he said half to himself, his eyes on the archer's back.

"What, so that Clint can yell some more? No." Her reply was blunt and she wasn't even looking at him, much to his displeasure.

"You are frightened of him?" he taunted her. "You listen to everything he says?"

"What? No." Her lip curled in disgust. "Would I have broken you out of the Tower if I did?"

He shrugged. "One thing, it means nothing."

She blew out a sigh, and turned to glare at him. "Look, you want to be mad that Clint caught onto your _genius_ plan to follow me around, you feel free to do that, but don't come over here and take it out on me."

He stared at her for a moment, obviously not expecting that kind of response, and then huffed angrily and left her alone, striding out after Clint to start another argument with him instead. Imogen shook her head at his antics and followed along behind, happy to be left out of…whatever that was. She had her own problems to deal with, without getting caught up in his as well.

oooooooooo

Imogen was almost glad to go home at the end of the day, when she was finally able to escape and return to the task she'd originally come here to complete. Her afternoon had turned into a session of archery practice and beating Clint at video games, all while Pietro avoided both of them, too busy sulking about their short adventure at lunchtime to join in.

Since it was past office hours by the time she left, the elevator was empty when it finally came to pick her up. "FRIDAY?" she said as the doors closed, turning to hit the button for the ground floor.

"Yes, Miss Haylock?" the AI replied.

"Did you find anything on Ruby?"

"That information was requested on privacy mode," the Irish voice informed her. "Would you like me to remove this setting?"

Imogen frowned. She'd never been given that answer when she'd asked before. Unless-

"Who is _Ruby_?" Pietro asked behind her as she turned around. She didn't even jump, already knowing he would be there.

"Why are you following me?" she demanded instead. He was unperturbed, leaning back against the way with his arms crossed and a small smile playing on his lips. "It's rude to stalk people," she added. "And creepy."

"I wasn't _following_ you," he insisted. "I…wanted to say sorry. For being mad at you."

"So you decided to follow me into the elevator instead of talking to me outside."

He shrugged. "Who is Ruby?" he asked again.

Imogen sighed. "Just someone I know. Why?"

"Like a friend?" His smile widened. "You do not have friends. The old man told me. He thinks you and Wanda should be friends, because you don't have any."

"You shouldn't listen to Clint," she told him. "Clint doesn't know what he's talking about."

"And is your name really _Sparrow_?" he asked. "If you were an Avenger, I mean."

She frowned at him. "No," she told him firmly. "That's just a dumb name that Tony calls me sometimes."

"It is not so bad," he said, and she couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

The elevator slid to a halt at floor 5, and opened to an empty room. "This is as far as I can allow Mr Maximoff to go," FRIDAY informed them. Pietro rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath. Even if she'd been able to make out the words, Imogen was pretty sure he wasn't speaking English.

"Enjoy prison," she said as he stepped out of the elevator. "Maybe if you sit still for a few hours you'll get out faster."

Pietro made a noise of disgust and turned to frown at her, but the doors were closing before he could think of a witty retort and then he was gone.

"Tell me about Ruby," Imogen demanded as soon as the doors were closed, slumping against the nearest wall.

"I have found video footage from street cameras of a woman identified as Ruby Radford being chased down and grabbed by an unidentified male. Further footage shows the man's vehicle heading straight for the police blockade currently surrounding Orizon Pharmaceuticals, then turning back and driving four hours away from the city to an address in Everett, Pennsylvania."

"Can I have the address?"

"I have already sent the locations and footage to your phone," FRIDAY informed her smugly as the elevator began to move.


	5. The Broken Man's War

_A/N: thanks sweet sunset rain and TheFlyingPenguin for your reviews last chapter :)_

oooooooooo

 **5: The Broken Man's War**

Several hours later, Imogen was parked on a street on the outskirts of Everett, Pennsylvania, which turned out to be nothing more than a short main street and one bar that was the only place open on a Sunday night. She'd passed it on her way to the town's small industrial district – a different short street lined with car yards and hardware stores and the like. HYDRA was set up in a big concrete warehouse-type structure that only looked a little out of place in its surroundings. It was surrounded by a tall fence, topped in barbed wire, and piles of building supplies filled the yard around it, which was the business they were using for cover, she guessed.

She drove past once, and then parked a fair way down the street in the shadow of a car repairs place. She'd only come to watch, and from here she could just see the man that was playing guard up on the roof. He ducked in and out of sight as he walked around, pausing occasionally to let his eyes sweep over the surrounding buildings and the street. If he saw her car, he didn't seem alarmed by it. There was another guard on the ground doing rounds every half an hour and disappearing around the back of the building the rest of the time. Whoever else was based here remained inside, probably fast asleep like she should be.

It was a long, boring wait. She'd come to scope the place out, and find out when the guards switched over, but only an hour and a half in, her eyes began to drift shut. It had been a long day, and now it was closing in on 2am – she'd never been good at staying up all night.

Just as she shook herself awake for the third time, a sharp movement on the roof caught her eye. For a long minute, there was nothing else there, not even the guard strolling past. And then, the guard was hanging half over the edge of the roof, clawing at the hand around his throat.

Imogen bolted upright in her seat. The attacker was shrouded in shadow, except for the glint of something silver on his hand. He'd effectively silenced the guard by hanging him out over the drop; there was not so much as a squeak to alert the man on the ground, who'd just walked by that exact spot.

Just as quickly as they'd come they disappeared again. There was no reappearance of the solitary attacker or the guard in the next seven minutes, even though her eyes never moved from the spot. The half hour mark came and passed without the other guard appearing on his previously punctual rounds. He was also taken out by Mysterious Roof Figure, she guessed, just as an alarm started to blare from somewhere inside the building, its shrill ringing cutting through the quiet night like a knife. When she opened the door of her car, she could hear faint gunfire too, and the occasional scream as war was waged against HYDRA.

Imogen was all but ready to drive away and leave whoever was cleaning out the base to it when she remembered Ruby. For one horrible second, she considered leaving her to HYDRA in favour of getting out of the way of whatever was going down in there, but morale won over. She'd promised that no one would lay a hand on Ruby for helping her, and now she was in the clutches of HYDRA and probably soon INTEL. And if Imogen didn't help her, if she broke that promise, she'd be no better than her brother, who she'd abandoned for that exact reason.

Plus, she wasn't scared of a little fighting. She'd been getting into fights her whole life. She wasn't scared of them now that she'd stopped. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her gun, and got out of the car.

Her stomach twisted nervously as she crept down the road, closer and closer to the source of the commotion. The lights that had previously lit the property killing themselves as she moved, plunging the whole thing into darkness, only made her feel slightly better about it all. She was terribly outgunned for this match, with just a handgun and not much else to defend herself with. It was all she owned, seeing as she was supposed to be actively avoiding conflict (and hadn't planned to get involved in anything tonight anyway).

At the front gate, she stopped to check if it would open, but the lock held firm, not to mention the thick chains that wrapped around the two gates to deter anyone from even trying to break in. She'd have to find the way that the guy on the roof had gotten in; so long as he hadn't parachuted or somehow climbed the fence or something.

It wasn't hard to find the place where'd they'd cut through the fence at the back of the unfenced block next door. The hole was twice as big as her, which was almost unnerving enough on its own, but she pushed through it anyway and crouched down in the long grass on the other side.

The place was still pitch black, the lights apparently out for good now, and mostly silent, except for the occasional, brief rattle of gunfire. The intruder (or more likely, intruders) was winning, if the prolonged conflict was anything to go by. Not that she had any time to think about that because the fact that there _was_ still conflict made her insides feel like someone had wrapped a cold fist around them. This was a bad idea…but she had to get Ruby. And she couldn't just leave it to these people who could just be another kind of evil, like INTEL. That was just the same as abandoning her.

Fingers curled around her gun, Imogen pushed down the feeling of trepidation and darted across the yard to a back door with a busted lock, letting herself in. The room beyond was completely overturned, table flipped, chairs flung across the room, and several computer monitors smashed and either dead or showing the black and white fuzz of a lost connection. There was one person in the corner of the room, a man that she assumed was the guard on the ground from the clothes he was wearing. He lay in a pool of his own blood on the other side of the table, eyes glazed over. She backed away hastily and went for the door that led to the rest of the base.

Instead of a hallway or another room, she was taken to a staircase leading down into the ground. There was another body on the second flight, a woman staring at the wall across from her. Imogen skirted around her too, silently reminding herself that everyone here worked for HYDRA. When faced with their bodies, it wasn't as convincing as she'd hoped.

Downstairs there was a hallway leading left and right, partially lit by long strips of emergency lighting. The sound of fighting to the left encouraged her to turn right. In the maze of corridors, beyond, she found three laboratories, several empty dormitories, and what looked like a medical ward. Two patients were visible from the door, sleeping peacefully with only the gentle beeping of whatever machines they were hooked up to for company. She almost passed them by, until she wondered who else might be in there and doubled back to make sure Ruby hadn't become a science experiment, with her gift for throwing people into walls.

Inside the ward was surprisingly quiet, despite the gunshots echoing through the halls. There were five patients in all, with a white curtain between each. Not one of them had woken up; though whether that was due to the thickness of the walls or whatever drugs were dripping slowly into their system, Imogen couldn't tell.

There were no doctors or nurses around to watch over them, and all five patients were sleeping like the dead, but still she felt compelled to step quietly and breathe lightly as she crept through the dark room, peering at each of their faces in turn. Three were men with short hair and bigger builds than Ruby had ever possessed. She didn't even need to see their faces to know to pass them by. The two women were next to each other, with just a curtain between them. One had dark skin, only just darker than the room itself, but the other was pale and on the small side, black hair fanning across her pillow…

Imogen froze, heart in her throat. She crept to the end of the bed. And then her heart sank again, because the face in the bed was unfamiliar.

Ruby was not here. Wherever she was, it wasn't a lab or a hospital (well, not one in this wing, anyway).

Back out in the hall, it took her a minute to realise that everything had gone silent. She turned to look back the way she had come, towards where they had been fighting, but she couldn't see or hear anyone sweeping the base. She might have a little time to get out then, before the winners came looking for survivors. If there was one thing she didn't want, it was to be confused for a HYDRA agent – or to be discovered by HYDRA themselves, if they were the victorious side in this skirmish.

A click and a whirl behind her alerted her to her next problem.

Imogen turned fast, but the man behind her was faster, pressing a gun to her forehead before she even caught a glimpse of his face. The weapon was cold and hard against her skin, a painful reminder of how stupid it had been to come in here and get herself in this situation. The face behind it was scruffy and severe, which surprised her. She'd been expecting the usual smart-mouthed grunt types that every shady organisation liked to employ, but this man was mute and quite possibly homeless, from the state of his clothes.

Before she could stare too much, the gun pressed harder into her skull and his finger twitched against the trigger. Her own gun slipped from her fingers. The clattering as it hit the ground echoed loudly through the silent halls, making her flinch. The man just looked confused.

"Please don't shoot me," she said, putting her hands up in the air. "I-I'm not…I'm just looking for my friend. They took her." He wasn't HYDRA, she had decided. They were many things, but none of them looked so unkempt. No one from HYDRA would be fighting in a hoodie that was stained and dirty and smelt like it hadn't been washed in a couple of weeks. He had to be one of the people that had broken in, and if he was one of them then that meant she might be able to convince him they were on the same side. If he ever talked, that is.

His brow furrowed slowly as he considered her story. There was a wariness in his eyes too, like he thought she might do something to turn the situation to her advantage – like there was something she _could_ do to get the upper hand while he had a gun to her head. If there was, it wasn't a trick she knew.

The gun fell away from her forehead. Her relief was so great that her legs almost fell out from under her. He stepped back, putting some space between them, and stared at her again.

"Go," he said eventually, in a low, rough voice that croaked from disuse. Imogen did not hesitate to obey, taking two steps backwards, and when he didn't shoot her immediately, turning and fleeing as fast as her legs would carry her.

By some miracle, he didn't shoot her the moment she turned her back on him, but let her run away free. As she turned a corner, she heard a gunshot and stopped dead, turning to see if he had followed her. But no, it was just an echo from further in the base. Four more followed it, one for every person sleeping in the medical ward. She ran again, and tried not to think about it.

As she reached the top of the stairs and felt the cold breeze that had blown the door open, she realised she'd left half of the base unexplored. She couldn't bring herself to go back down there though; she had half a feeling that she'd been left alive on a whim, not because that man was the merciful type. If she met him again, he'd probably shoot her without a second thought. And who knew how many other people he had down there, or how ruthless they would be if she ran into them.

Imogen slowed to a walk through the security room, stopping in the shadow of the doorway to check outside for any friends of the man downstairs. The whole place was deserted. If it wasn't nigh on impossible that one man could take out all of HYDRA, she could have sworn he was the only other person on the property.

Still, she ran at full speed across the yard, ready to duck for cover if bullets began to fly. Only when she'd wriggled through the fence, ripping her jacket on the way, and was safe in the shadows next door did she stop to breathe and to look back again. No one was there like she was expecting. Not even the man she'd run into downstairs. Breathing hard, she gave herself a minute to lean against the building and watch and recover. She was fit enough to run like she had and still be able to fight but adrenaline and panic had hit her hard the moment she'd turned her back on him and had held her tightly all the way out. Only now in the shelter of a different building and assured no one was watching her did she feel them fade away, leaving her with a frantic heart and empty lungs.

When she felt like she was ready to move again, she went to her car, moving slowly from shadow to shadow with one eye on the HYDRA building at all times. Nothing stirred except for the trees that lined the road, muttering loudly in the wild breeze. They did nothing to calm her nerves. She had a feeling nothing would, until she was safe back in New York.

oooooooooo

"I hear you've picked out a team," Lena said the moment Will entered her office, without even glancing up from the papers she was reading.

"I have," he replied after a moment of surprise, closing the door behind him. "They're not my old team, but they'll do. Is that what you called me up here for?"

She sighed and threw the papers onto a haphazardous stack sitting dangerously close to the edge of her desk. "Sort of," she said, all of her attention now on him. "I figured you'd want your first assignment, now that you've got a team together."

Will shrugged and dropped into a seat. "That's why I'm here, isn't it?" he asked.

Lena graced him with a smile and reached for a folder behind her, passing it across the desk. "I appreciate the strong work ethic." He chuckled and opened the folder. "Maybe we should parade you around while you're here, make you a role model for all the free-loaders I employ."

He heard her quip but didn't bother responding, too busy reading the first page of what turned out to be an extensive report on a girl named Ruby Radford, which sounded vaguely familiar to him though he couldn't remember why. There was a picture next to the name, of a girl with black hair and a neat fringe that hid her eyes, with a sallow face and an expression that made her look like she'd just sucked on a lemon. It didn't jog anything from his memory; not that it really mattered who she was or if he knew her. A target was a target.

There was a whole profile on her filling the rest of the page. 5' 7", 23 years old, skills in hacking, cyber warfare, and limited combat training. She'd worked for INTEL for a while, and SHIELD before that, which was probably where he was remembering her from.

"I need you to bring her in for me," Lena said as he finished reading that first page. "Ruby Radford is an old employee of ours, and we have a job for her. She'll probably come quietly, but if not…well, I'm sure you can find a way to bring her here without killing her."

"What's all this other stuff?" Will asked, flipping through the rest of the debrief file. Aside from the first page, it was filled with medical and scientific reports that made little to no sense to him.

Lena's face became unreadable. "That's the part I need to talk to you about," she said carefully. Will closed the file. "Ruby's a little _different_ than most people. Lots of neurological problems, she's very unstable. She's usually very docile, but every now and then she'll just snap, so you can't push her too hard." She stopped for a moment, but Will stayed silent, feeling like there was more to be said. "She's also showed signs of telekinetic powers, though we couldn't measure exactly what kind or her limitations the few times we've seen her use them. In the end, she was just too unstable."

"Powers?" he interrupted. "I didn't know you'd had so much success in that field."

She stared at him. "You think I've spent ten years working on this with no results?" she scoffed. "I'm not stupid, Haylock."

"Do you know anything at _all_ about these powers?" he asked.

Lena thought about it. "People who were hit by them described it as being hit by a brick wall," she offered. "Or being punched across a room by a giant fist. That's her usual tactic, to fling people into walls and such. I've never seen her throw objects, but I assume she could if she wanted to."

"Sounds like fun," Will quipped. "And I'm assuming you know where to find her? Or am I doing that too?"

"We found her for you," Lena said. "She's currently being held in a HYDRA facility in Everett, Pennsylvania for hacking into some of their financial records."

Everett. He had a friend or two based in Everett, if he remembered correctly, and he vaguely remembered where it was, though he hadn't been there in a long while. That was how it went in this line of work. "I know the place," he told Lena as he pulled the top sheet out of the file she'd given him. "We should go now if you want her alive. HYDRA won't wait around debating what to do with her for long."

"You don't want to take all of that?" Lena asked, nodding at the discarded file.

Will shook his head. "I don't need science reports in the field," he said. "They won't be any help in bringing her in."

"Very well then." Lena leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. "As long as you do your job, I don't care what you take."

"I always do my job ," he assured her, and reached for the door.


	6. Redhanded

**Redhanded**

The first thing Imogen heard upon entering the Avengers training room was yelling, mainly from Clint in the middle of the room as he was knocked off his feet by something moving so fast it was a blur to her eyes. Pietro, she guessed, stopping by the door to watch the mayhem. Clint wasn't the only Avenger in the room, but he was the only one making any noise; Natasha was over by the windows, keeping far away from whatever the archer was up to while she sparred with a guy that Imogen vaguely recognised as Falcon, and Wanda was in another corner hovering (which was so unexpected she decided she wasn't even going to question it). Steve was there too, standing quietly against the wall nearby. He was the only one paying attention to whatever Clint and Pietro were doing; the others were steadfastly ignoring them.

Without any warning, Pietro appeared in front of her, just long enough for her to spot the smug grin on his face, and then disappeared again. That was enough to catch Steve's attention though, and suddenly Captain America was coming to greet her. She let the door shut behind her, wondering if maybe she should have just left while she had the chance and skipped whatever weird training was going on today.

"Imogen," Steve greeted her warmly. Apparently watching Clint struggle had put him in a good mood.

"What the hell is going on in here?" she asked in way of greeting, as Clint shot an arrow off in the general direction of Pietro. It disappeared mid-flight, snatched up in a blur of motion, and then reappeared at Clint's feet. The archer just looked frustrated.

"Just testing out some of our new recruits," Steve said, faintly amused.

"Are you sure you're not testing Clint's patience instead?" she pointed out as an arrow skittered across the ground.

"I might be." Steve had a mischievous sort of smile on his face. Imogen wished all his devoted fans could see him now, torturing Avengers for his own amusement. "He volunteered, actually. I think he thinks he can convince Pietro to officially join the Avengers."

Imogen frowned. "Why doesn't he want to be an Avenger, anyway?"

"Why don't you?" Steve shot back.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm really not Avenger's material. Or team material. Even HYDRA didn't want me."

"There's not real requirements for the Avengers, you know."

"I feel like there's an unspoken standard here, Captain." She gestured to the other occupants of the room, one of which was actually flying.

"You've been training with Clint," he said. "And you have that ice thing you do-"

"The ice thing is useless," she cut across him, wiping her fingers against her pants even though there is no ice there now. "It just gets in the way."

"Not if you learn how to use it."

"I don't want to learn how to use it."

A thud echoed loudly across the room as Clint finally managed to pin the speedster by tripping him on the way past. Imogen turned just in time to watch him fall, not that there was much to see – one second he was a blur, the next he was lying on the floor.

"Just think about it," Steve finished as Pietro surged to his feet, ignoring Clint's outstretched hand.

"I already have," she replied, mind well and truly made up.

"You kids are all so rude," Clint complained loudly, approaching them.

"I'm not a kid," she reminded him automatically.

"Neither am I," Pietro added, appearing behind Clint.

"Yes you are," the archer grumbled. "All of you. Wanda's the only grown up one."

"Better than being an old man like you," Pietro shot back.

"Aw." Clint frowned and turned to Steve. "This is workplace harassment."

Steve just looked amused. "Manners, Quicksilver," he said to Pietro in a warning voice, more for Clint's benefit than as an actual reprimand. Pietro just rolled his eyes.

"Is this even a workplace?" Imogen added, just to rib Clint a little more.

His eyes narrowed, but he didn't take the bait. "What are you doing over here, annoying Steve?" he asked instead.

She shrugged. "You told me we were training today. Now. But if you're busy, I'll just go…"

His face cleared. "No," he said, grabbing her arm before she could run away. "You're not getting out of it that easy."

"You're sure you don't want to be up Speedy over there a little more?" She tried to twist out of his grip half-heartedly, but his fingers didn't even budge.

"He would have to catch me first," Pietro put in unhelpfully.

Clint sighed, and let her go. "This is my life," he muttered to himself, defeated.

Steve just clapped him on the back. "Good luck," he said, and went off to talk to Wanda instead.

"This is why you're not allowed to go after INTEL," Clint reminded her as he harried her off towards the centre of the room, where he had been standing earlier. "Or HYDRA, or whoever you're chasing now." For a moment she wondered if he knew she was still going after both organisations – but no, he was only trying to remind her of the few beatings she'd took back when she started trying to hunt them down.

"You are going after HYDRA?" Pietro said, suddenly walking alongside them on the other side of Clint.

"No, she's not," Clint answered before Imogen could even say anything. She rolled her eyes and started stretching. "And neither are you."

The boy blew out a frustrated sigh and shifted restlessly from foot to foot, unable to stand still for more than two seconds. "I wouldn't want to anyway. You think I care what HYDRA do now?"

Clint crossed his arms and looked the speedster up and down with a trained eye, his serious face on now. "I think you want someone to blame," he replied in a measured tone. "And if you can't blame Stark, then HYDRA are next on the list."

"Wait, what did Stark do?" Imogen interjected.

"He built the bombs that rebels like best," Pietro said, as if that made any sense at all.

"But he doesn't build weapons anymore," she pointed out. "He gave that up years ago."

"He has still done it." Pietro was unyielding. Clint stepped forward before they could dissolve into any kind of argument.

"Later," he told them both firmly. Imogen shrugged and agreed, not particularly attached to the conversation topic. Pietro huffed unhappily and disappeared.

"What's his problem?" she asked, as he did a lap of the room in record time.

"It's a long story," Clint said, shaking his head. "You should ask him though. None of my business."

"You're a spy," she told him. "Everyone's business is your business."

"And the other day you were telling me I'm unemployed."

"If you don't get paid, you aren't employed."

"Whatever," he said, giving up. "Are you ready?"

"I guess," Imogen replied, and raised her fists.

"I'm not going to go easy today," Clint warned, right before he jumped at her.

He wasn't kidding. Before she could even hope to put up a defense, she was suffocating under a barrage of blows. He had her in a choke hold before she was even aware of what was happening.

" _Focus_ , Imogen," he said as he let her go.

"I hate sparring with you," she mumbled and centred herself again.

Clint responded by coming at her again, this time aiming straight for the hold he's just released her from. He was moving slower this time, and she actually managed to dodge and return fire with her own fists. The next few blows were slower too, letting her fall into a pattern of dodge and counter; until he threw in a swift uppercut and she almost lost her footing getting out of its way. Clint didn't hesitate to sweep her legs out from under her and then she was on the ground anyway, flat on her back and glaring at the ceiling.

"Watch out for unexpected attacks," was his advice this time, given as he helped her to her feet.

"Sure," she said and swung first this time, starting the fight again. He dodged and attacked. She blocked. And then, lighting-fast, he swept at her feet again. She jumped to avoid it but left her guard down; before she knew it, she was back in the choke hold.

"Let go," she gasped when he didn't immediately release her, slapping at his arm. His grip slackened, but he did not let go like she had been expecting.

"Get yourself out," he instructed and she scowled. She hated this part; no mattered how much she trained, Clint was always bigger and stronger than her, which made getting away from him twice as hard. She was too small to use brute force, and not flexible, balanced, or skilled enough for most of Natasha's tricks, so there was only one way she could consistently get out of a hold like this. Except that she _hated_ it.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she curled forward, moved one leg behind his, and then threw all her weight back and let herself fall with him. The hold broke as he hit the ground and she rolled away, ready for the fight to continue, but that was the end of this round.

"Better," Clint commented, and pulled himself to his feet. "You start again."

She did, going for his legs this time. He won again, not a minute later, and again after that. It would have been infuriating if this was not how training with Clint always went. She'd win maybe once ever session, usually when he was distracted by something and expected her to stop too. No matter how good she got, he was always one step ahead of her, always teaching her one more thing to watch out for in a real fight. And then there was archery, which he insisted on teaching her even though he never missed the bullseye and she rarely hit the same spot on the target twice. _As long as you hit the target, you've done something useful,_ he was always telling her, but it was easy for him to say that when he never _missed_ anything.

At least he wasn't Natasha though, who occasionally showed up to 'help out'. Imogen had never even come close to beating her in anything. Even on her worst days, the Black Widow was invincible.

It felt like hours passed until they were finished (Imogen doubted it actually _was_ hours though – time passed slowly when you were getting your ass kicked over and over again). As soon as Clint declared practice over, she slumped onto the ground, right there in the middle of the room, too tired to move for a while. There was already a bruise forming on her shin, she realised as she sat there, regaining her breath. Clint had kicked her too hard accidentally during one of their last few rounds, right in the middle of her shin where it would stand out the best. Not that she could complain – she'd probably given him a few bruises today too, practicing throwing him to the ground without compromising herself.

Clint patted her on the shoulder, a habit she suspected he'd picked up from Steve, and then left her to it, heading over to Natasha. Steve was in the ring with her now, and they were fairly evenly matched. Imogen could just see them sparring despite Clint and Wanda and – Sam, was that his name? – standing in the way. They looked more like they were dancing than fighting, though there was a deadly grace to their movement that could not be misplaced. For a while she just watched, until a shadow fell over her and she turned to look up at the person standing over her.

"Are you just going to sit there?" She recognised Pietro's voice before she saw him, and schooled her face into a look of annoyance as she looked up.

"No," she replied, but didn't make any move to get up. "Are you just going to stand there and ask stupid questions?"

"You fight well," he said, ignoring her jibe. It sounded like a peace offering.

She shook her head. "Not that well." He offered her a hand up and she took it, only for him to let go almost immediately.

" _Merde_ ," he hissed, clutching his hand. "That's _cold_."

"What-" She stopped and looked down at her hands, and realised they were covered in a thin layer of ice. "Oh." She brushed the ice off, but he just took another step back, eyeing her with mistrust. "What?"

"You are very cold," he explained slowly, gesturing to her hands.

Imogen frowned in confusion, and then touched her own arm. Her hand was _past_ freezing, so cold she couldn't hold it there for more than a second. "Oh," she said again as she hauled herself off the ground without his help. "Sorry. That happens sometimes."

"You cannot control it?" Pietro asked.

She shrugged and turned towards her bag, which was still over by the door. "Haven't tried."

He followed her doggedly. "Why not?"

"Because I don't _want_ to?" Reaching her bag, she crouched down to pull out a water bottle, willing her hands to warm up. Only half the bottle froze when she touched it, which was something at least.

Pietro was frowning, like he didn't understand what he was hearing. Idly, she wondered if it was the language barrier or just him. "You don't want to learn control?" he said slowly.

"No," she corrected. "I don't want superpowers. Anyway, it's not like it's a useful power. More annoying than anything."

"Not _useful_?" Pietro shook his head in disbelief. "You make ice!" He pointed to the bottle, which was already melting.

"Yeah, that tiny bit of ice will definitely help me win a fight." She rolled her eyes, stuffed the bottle back in her bag out of sight, and stood up.

"You don't want to help people?"

Imogen stopped just short of replying with a 'no', aware that it would make her sound like a horrible person. "Is that why you can run so fast?" she asked instead. "So that you can help people?"

He shrugged. "The place I come from, it is not like America," he said. "There is a lot of fighting. I want to stop it."

"What are you doing here, then?" He was taller than her, and she had to look up to meet his eye, which annoyed her. "Sokovia's a long way away from New York."

"They brought me here after…the battle. And Wanda does not want to go back."

"She might be right," Imogen pointed out. "I mean, really, there's not much left of Sokovia for you to save, is there?"

It was Pietro's turn to be annoyed. "There are still people there. Good people _and_ bad people." He eyed her speculatively, and there was something in his gaze that made her feel uncomfortable. "You would understand, yes? You have been chasing bad people."

Surprised, she took a step backwards. "What?" she said defensively. "What are you talking about? I haven't been chasing anyone."

"The old man seems to think you have been," he pointed out. "And on the rooftop, I know you were arguing about HYDRA. You have been fighting them, no?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she claimed and picked up her bag, shouldering her way past him and out the door. She made it to the end of the hallway at a fast walk before he blew past her, almost knocking the bag out of her hands.

"Do you do this to everyone?" she asked angrily.

"Do what?" He sounded distracted – wasn't even looking at her.

"Run around and corner them all the time when they're trying to-" Halfway through her exasperated explanation, she realised what he was looking at. "Hey! That's my phone!"

" _Ja_." She leapt forward and snatched at it but he was too quick, and held it up above her head where she couldn't reach it.

"Why do you have my phone?" she demanded, refusing to jump for it like an actual five year old.

"If you won't tell me the truth, I will have to find it myself." He was scrolling through her messages, she realised with a jolt.

"I know you're not from around here, but in America it's really rude to go through people's stuff." She grabbed his arm as she talked and tried to drag it down but to no avail; he struggled against her and the phone barely moved an inch. Not for the first time in her life, she found herself cursing tall people.

He was too busy frowning at her phone to listen to what she was staying. "Your friend is Ruby, no?" he said, mostly to himself. "You were asking the-" He paused to gesture at the ceiling, "-about her."

"I have friends." She gave up all dignity and jumped for the phone. He held it just a little bit higher, and looked smug when her fingers barely brushed it. "So what?"

"You were asking the… _FRIDAY_ to look for her, weren't you?" Finally, he turned to look at her instead of the phone. "Was she taken by HYDRA? This is why you want to fight them?"

"You're making a lot of stuff up right now," she pointed out unhelpfully. Pietro rolled his eyes and went back to her messages. Ruby's were right there, in the centre of the screen, and of course that was the thread he clicked on next.

His frown deepened as he read. Imogen slumped in defeat. That would teach her to delete her messages. Slowly, he lowered the phone back within her reach, but she didn't go for it. There was no point now, when she already knew she'd lost.\

Finally, his eyes lifted to her. "You know this says HYDRA right here, _ja_?" he said, and turned the phone so that she could see what was on the screen.

"I'm surprised you even know how to read, she replied, crossing her arms.

"I went to school." He sounded a little offended. "I know how to read."

"Pity they didn't teach you any manners," she grumbled, but he wasn't listening again.

"What are all these times?" he asked. "And addresses?" He looked up again. "Are these all places where HYDRA are?"

"We're not looking for HYDRA," she told him in annoyance.

He didn't look convinced. "What are you looking for then?"

"Nothing," she claimed.

"No," he decided immediately. "You are hiding something. You and this _Ruby_. And I think you want to go after HYDRA because the Avengers will not, now that they have found what they were looking for." He held out her phone and stared her down, expecting a confession.

"Why do you care?" she snapped instead, snatching the phone out of his hand.

"You think I want to sit still while they are still out there?" he replied, arms crossed. "They have done just as much wrong to me as they have to you. I want them to pay." She remained stubbornly tight-lipped, and he sighed dramatically. "Just admit you have been chasing them, at least."

"Fine," she said reluctantly. "I've been tracking shadowy organisations for payback. So what?"

There was a spark of smug victory in his eye. "So I want to help."

"No," she said immediately.

His smirk fell. "Why not?" he demanded.

"Because I don't need any help," Imogen told him. "And if Clint finds out he'll stop us, and you live here, you can't exactly sneak out all the time."

"Says who?" Pietro scoffed. "They cannot catch me even when I was right in front of them. And you have lost you friend. I will help you find her."

As much as she hated to admit it, he was making sense. And she did need help, though she doubted he would be the same kind of help that Ruby had been. At the very least, she could get Ruby back, before HYDRA did something terrible to her.

"Fine," she relented. "But you can't tell Clint. And we can't talk about it here."

"Where do we talk then?"

"You know where I live," she said. "Come and see me later." He nodded, and she finally pushed past him and forced a deep breath into her lungs, wondering if she really had made the right choice.


	7. Partners In Crime

**7 - Partners In Crime**

oooooooo

He found her house just on dark, like he'd said he would. Imogen had been half hoping he wouldn't, that he'd just forget the whole thing and never bother her again, but he was determined – whatever trouble she was poking at, he wanted to poke it too, for no known reason other than he was bored and HYDRA had done something to piss him off.

The knock on her door was swift and light but she'd been waiting for him, perched on the couch with the TV turned down to a distant mutter. When she opened the door he was leaning against the wall, watching the flickering light of a bright TV under Simone's door. The kids were having a movie night, she guessed; she could just hear the voices of the character from some cartoon bleeding through the door.

"Are you coming in?" she asked reluctantly, holding the door open.

Pietro jumped in surprise. Apparently he hadn't even noticed she was there. "What is happening in there?" he asked as he came in, glancing back at Simone's door.

"Her kids are watching movies," Imogen explained. "They like to turn off the lights and pretend they're in a cinema."

"Oh." He looked around her apartment, but didn't say anything more.

"You know," she said as she went to the kitchen to brew herself some coffee. "I'm still not convinced I need your help on this."

"Have you found your friend yet?" he asked pointedly, taking at seat at her bench.

"No," she admitted, and then felt compelled to defend herself. "I know where she's been though, and how to find her. I don't need you for that."

"I think you will," he insisted. "Even if you find her on your own, HYDRA will have her, no? You will need someone to help you fight."

She turned to glare at him. "How do you know that?"

He shrugged and offered her an impish smile. "I guess. And you just told me."

Imogen glared at him some more, and then turned back to her coffee. "Alright, so HYDRA have her somewhere. Do you have any other ideas?"

"We go after them. You say you know where they are."

"I said I know where they've _been_. I haven't found out where else they took her yet."

"So you _don't_ know how to find your friend."

She shot him another annoyed look. "I'll find her," she claimed boldly.

"Not alone," Pietro pressed. "You are just too stubborn to admit it."

"Maybe I just don't want your help."

"I know."

Imogen half expected him to give up, but he stayed where he was. She wasn't going to be able to scare him off, or annoy him until he went away; no, she was more or less stuck with him.

Did that have to be a bad thing though? She found herself reluctantly considering _all_ her options as she poured her coffee and stirred in sugar, _including_ letting him stay. He wouldn't be as much help as Ruby had been in tracking down INTEL and HYDRA and worming their way into their system, but he was surprisingly intuitive. He's read her texts and guessed almost everything she'd been working on from the information there. And he would be useful in a fight, like he'd said. Better than her alone, anyway – watching him fight Clint earlier, she had no doubt that he would be capable of taking out a whole HYDRA cell if they had to.

Really, the only problem was her own reluctance to work with anyone, especially this boy that she barely knew, who she still didn't trust to not go running straight to Clint with everything she was doing in her spare time. She was loath to admit it, but she had a much better chance of saving Ruby with him than if she was alone.

Sighing, she took her coffee and crossed the kitchen to grab yesterday's newspaper, dropping it on the bench in front of him. "It's pretty much all in there," she told him reluctantly, leaning across the bench to flip through it for him. She paused on page five, where some reporter had organised a full page spread on the disappearance of four men from Everett, Pennsylvania, and the subsequent discovery of a network of tunnels beneath their shared workspace. It was a good article; they'd commented on the discovery of living quarters for 40 or 50 people, the well-stocked armoury, and the broken doors and bullet holes that suggested there had been a fight there. And of course, they noted a suspicious lack of bodies and the possible ties to HYDRA.

Pietro took a long time to read through it, even longer than it took her to re-read it twice upside down (which was definitely not her forte). "Are you sure you know how to read?" she asked with a frown after watching him stare at the same paragraph for two minutes straight.

He glanced up, brow furrowed in frustration. "I know how to read," he insisted, just like he had the last time she'd asked.

Imogen shook her head and sipped her coffee. "You're a pretty slow reader then," she said, as casually as she could. "I've read that thing like three times since you started, and I'm not exactly fast."

Pietro huffed in frustration. "Fine. I can read _some._ Most of this is…" He gestured angrily, but she got the message. "This is why I don't like English. _Pārāk grūti_. It makes no sense."

"I could say the same about Sokovian," she shot back, and spun the newspaper around to face her.

"Sokovian is not so hard," he argued. "Not like this language."

"Your sister doesn't seem to mind it."

Pietro scoffed. "Wanda? She is just better at it. Went to more school. She does all the talking, when we need things."

Imogen turned her eyes back to the paper, not sure what to say. She could mention that they are both school drop-outs, or take another jibe at his reading, but she didn't feel like it now. Pietro saved her from having to think of anything anyway. "What does this say?" he asked, and reached out to tap the paper with one finger.

She cleared her throat and straightened the pages self-consciously. "It's about a HYDRA base in Pennsylvania," she explained, grateful for something else to talk about. "About four hours from here. Some people when through and killed everyone stationed there a few weeks ago. The police found out about it because four of the HYDRA agents were living in the town as part of the base's cover story, and they're officially missing now. Probably dead, like all the others."

"Is this where they took your friend?" Pietro asked, leaning over to take a better look at the picture that accompanied the article. It was an old one, of the four missing men standing in front of their newly built workplace.

"It's where FRIDAY thinks they went," Imogen replied. "But it's empty now." She shrugged.

"And you have been to see it? To look?"

Imogen hesitated. "Once," she admitted. "But I didn't get very far."

"Because you were scared?"

She scowled at him. "Because I picked the night some random group of people decided to kill everyone inside and I didn't feel like getting caught in the crossfire."

He sat up straighter. "There is someone else killing HYDRA?"

She nodded. "They killed two hundred people at a company in Manhattan just before they went to this base. Don't you know that?"

"We should find them," he said, ignoring the jibe.

"Good luck," she told him dryly. "They don't exist. Ruby tried for weeks, but there's no way to track them – they just appear, kill a bunch of people, and disappear again." She'd given up on chasing that lead several months ago. Between the lack of information on their operation and their singlemindedness towards HYDRA, she and Ruby both had decided they would be no help in finding INTEL and weren't worth chasing.

Pietro was frowning at her. "If they are after HYDRA, then they will be where HYDRA is, no?"

Imogen paused, and realised he was right. "I guess," she allowed carefully. "So what?"

" _So_ , if you find another HYDRA base, sometime they will show up. And then we can follow them."

"Wait." She held up a hand to stop him from continuing. "Are you saying you want to just hang around near some HYDRA base until someone attacks it, and then try to follow them without getting killed as well?"

"Yes!" His face lit up, and then dropped again when she shook her head.

"We're not just going after random people who can kill us. We're just looking for Ruby," she told him. "I don't want to get into fights if we don't have to."

"And what will you do when you find her and they come looking for her again?" Pietro asked. "Tell the Avengers so that they will help you? I thought you said you did not want the old man to know."

"I don't know yet!" she replied hotly, mostly because she knew he was right. "I'll figure it out once I find her."

"You will end up fighting them anyway," Pietro predicted. "Because you don't want to tell Clint."

Imogen slammed her mug down on the bench, hard enough to spill the coffee everywhere, and walked away. She sat down on the couch instead, trying to pretend she was watching TV and not silently fuming over his ability to always be _right_. He wasn't just right about Ruby, or her rescue mission; he also knew that she was _scared_ of fighting HYDRA, even if he hadn't said it yet. That was the worst part. She didn't like it when other people knew her limitations.

Pietro followed her across the room, moving twice as fast as she had. He stopped between her and the TV, blocking her view, and crossed his arms, waiting for something.

"Get out of the way," she grumbled, and tried to see around him.

He moved a step closer, making himself even more of an obstacle. "If you want to find your friend, you will have to fight them eventually."

"Doesn't mean I have to go looking for a fight now though," she replied coldly.

He huffed in frustration. "Why not? You know how to fight, and I will help you. I have fought worse men than them before."

"You've fought _robots_ ," she added dryly.

"See? HYDRA is nothing after robots."

"You realise you still sound crazy, right?" Imogen sat up straighter, and wished he would stop smiling.

"Why?" he asked.

"Two people against a whole army of HYDRA agents? Those aren't exactly good odds."

He scoffed loudly. "They will never see me coming," he claimed. "The odds are better than you think. They are not an army anymore. And I am worth more than just one person."

She stared at him until she was sure he was serious, and then shook her head. "Do you at least have a _plan_?" she asked, well aware she was fighting a losing battle.

He shrugged. "Find more HYDRA bases, like I was saying before. Maybe find those people who have been killing them to help. It is simple."

"You really aren't selling this whole idea."

His face screwed up in frustration. "What else is there to plan? We go, we look for your friend, and we come back." His eyes fell on the newspaper they'd abandoned over on the bench. He zoomed across the apartment to retrieve it. "We should go there," he continued as he reappeared in front of her, and dropped the paper in her lap. It was the page with the article about the HYDRA base and the four missing men.

"That place is empty," she reminded him, but she was staring at the building in the background of the picture and wondering what she had missed, in the side of the base she hadn't explored.

"You said you did not see everything," he pressed. "Maybe there is a clue here." Her eyes never left the picture. She'd been very deliberately avoiding the thought of going back there after the fright that man had given her. If he or HYDRA were watching the place, she would not go there alone; but she was running out of leads to chase elsewhere, and she wouldn't be _alone_ now if Pietro came with her. And she'd promised to free Ruby if they caught her.

Like he'd said, she was going to have to face up to HYDRA at some point. She could at least start with the base that was supposed to be abandoned.

"Okay," she agreed slowly. "It's not a _terrible_ idea to go back and look."

"Good!" Pietro was at the door already. "Then we should go. It is not far, is it?"

She blinked at him. "What, now?" she replied when she registered exactly what he was saying. "You want to go right now?"

"Why not?" he shot back. "Ruby, we should find her soon, no? HYDRA are not good people to be a prisoner with."

"Oh." It slipped out as she rose from the couch. She'd like nothing more than to stay there and go searching another day when she'd had time to mentally prepare herself to face the HYDRA base again, but he was right. It had been too long already, and she did really want to find Ruby alive and well enough to continue the search for INTEL. Once again, she found herself agreeing with him. "I guess you're right," she allowed.

"I am always right," he replied. "So? We will go now?"

"Yes," she sighed. "I have a car on the street. We can be there by like, midnight."

He was out the door before she was even finished talking.

oooooooo

The base was dark and abandoned, the complete opposite of how it had been last time she'd been here. The gates weren't even locked, just clumsily pulled shut with a line of police tape pulled across them, fluttering in the cool night breeze. She parked just down the street – no point playing the spy game when there was nobody here to care about their arrival – and for a moment they sat in silence and listened to the engine tick over as it cooled.

When she could take it no more, she unclipped her seatbelt. The sharp snap as the buckle released sounded uncomfortably loud in the quiet that had fallen over them. "You still want to do this?" she asked an unusually quiet Pietro, pausing with one hand on the door handle.

"Do you?" he replied abruptly, and got out of the car before she could even respond.

Rolling her eyes, Imogen followed suit, climbing out into a night that was just a few degrees short of a mild temperature. Shivering slightly, she pulled her coat tighter and touched the gun at her hip to reassure herself that it was still there. Pietro, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, didn't even seem to have noticed the cold, too busy staring at the relatively small building that hid HYDRA's underground base.

She couldn't take the inaction, not this close to possible danger. Better to get it over and done with than to stand here all day looking at it. "We should go," she said pointedly, and resisted the urge to hide her hands in her pockets.

"This is HYDRA?" Pietro asked dubiously, but followed her across the road all the same.

"What were you expecting, a castle?" She'd meant it as a joke, but for a minute he looked like he thought she was being serious.

"No," he said finally, way too defensive. "I just thought it is bigger than…this." He gestured at the base, and Imogen had to admit that he had a point. The building above ground wasn't more than a big concrete box, one storey high and flat-roofed. It was surrounded by a yard of scrap metal and timber posts and other building materials that kept up the façade of the business that was supposed to run there. It wasn't the sort of place you would think to come when looking for a shady operation and its base.

Then again, that was probably what shadowy organisations looked for in a base. So this was exactly the kind of place they should be looking.

"Can we just hurry up and do this?" was all she said to Pietro though. "The longer we stand out here, the more likely someone is to realise we're here."

"Fine," he said, a little perturbed that she had cut him off so abruptly. Imogen ignored him, already shoving the gate open just wide enough for them to slip through and ducking under the battered police tape. Pietro was right on her heels and she was secretly grateful - this place was open and exposed and under no circumstances would she ever be a welcome visitor here.

The doors to the fake cover business were all firmly locked and boarded up, unlike the gate. She led the way around to the back door she'd used last time, grateful of the shadow of the building and the cover of darkness to hide them from any watching eyes. The previously broken lock on that door had been fixed since the night it had been attacked and was sealed shut. Pietro made short work of breaking it all over again, even though that meant people would know they had been here. Apparently the speedster didn't know how to be discreet, or care enough to cover his tracks.

Inside was dark; Imogen stopped to pull her phone out to use its torch as light. The beam fell on the trail of blood that had been left to dry on the floor, just a dark stain now. The body of the guard that had been here was gone at least. She silently prayed that all the other bodies had been taken away too – she wasn't ready to face _that_ kind of scene just yet.

She skirted around the bloodstain, taking her time to get across the room to the stairs but Pietro was undaunted, stepping over it with barely a second glance to acknowledge that someone had died here. She grudgingly let him take the lead then, admitting to herself that if she didn't, she might not have the guts to descend all the way into that dark hole.

There were no lights on underground, not even the emergency lighting that had showed her the way last time, just the thin beam from her phone fighting a hard battle against the looming darkness. It was quiet too – so quiet that they could have heard a pin drop from anywhere in the base. Their breaths sounded like roars in the eerie silence and Imogen was sure her heartbeat had become audible, it was beating so fast and so hard. For a moment, they just stood at the bottom of the stairs, torchlight flashing back and forth, and listened for any sign that they were not alone. All that came back was silence.

Pietro broke it first. "Which way?" he asked in a voice so quiet he was almost whispering. The sound still carried down the empty hall, making them both cringe.

Imogen looked left, and then right. She'd turned that was last time and had come up with nothing; labs and dormitories weren't what they were looking for. "Left," she decided, and shone the torch down their long, lonely path. A trail of blood began just where the light ended, leading them into the depths of the place, and she swallowed hard and decided not to think about it.

Pietro led again. She was learning quickly that he did not like to be still for too long in anything he did, even if they were walking into a put of darkness where anything could be hiding just around a corner. He didn't even seem to have realised the kind of danger that had filled this place for as long as it had existed, or care if they came back. She almost envied him that kind of bold stupidity – in any old street brawl, she would jump right in without hesitation, and even one or two trained enemies wouldn't cause her a second of doubt, but this? An underground base with one exit, owned by the people who would kill her the moment they got their hands on her? She hated that it made her feel fear, but she just couldn't shake the feeling, no matter how hard she tried.

And then there was the man that had almost shot her last time she was here, and whoever he worked for. Just another reason to stay away from this place in case someone unfriendly came back.

The trail of blood took them to a room that looked like the headquarters of the base. It was filled with banks of computers, most of them smashed beyond repair, and more than a few ominous stains in the carpet. The room looked like it had been swept clean; not a sheet of paper anywhere and broken computers shoved together in the sort of organised pile that HYDRA wouldn't have had time to arrange the night they all died. Imogen only lingered at the door a minute before pulling Pietro away and leaving the room to its dark slumber.

"You don't think there will be anything useful there?" he asked as they continued onwards.

"HYDRA have cleaned the place out," she replied. "And anyway, we have to find where they had Ruby first. If you really want to look in there, we can come back later."

He made a noise that sounded dissatisfied but didn't say anything more. They walked side by side now; the conversation had calmed her nerves, or maybe they'd become so frayed that she had overcome them. Either way, she found the courage now to peer through windows and open doors to see what lay behind them, until finally they came across one with bars on the window instead of glass, and she knew immediately that this was what they had come for.

Behind the door were more stairs, leading them even deeper into the earth. Her stomach lurched at the thought of just how far from the surface they actually were, how far back they had to go before they could escape.

"Are you going to go down?" Pietro asked, shaking her free of her thoughts. She realised with a jolt that she'd been frozen at the top of the stairs for a while now, and shook herself for being so absurd.

"Of course," she replied hotly and forced herself down the first step, and then the next one. It got easier after that, just one step after another, twenty in all, and Pietro right at her back forcing her onwards lest he run into her.

At the bottom, they came face to face with what looked like a crime scene in a jail. HYDRA had set this room up not unlike the holding cells at any old police station; three little boxes of steel bars and concrete with a bed, a sink, and a toilet each. The one to the left was a mess; the sink was broken, leaking water slowly all over the floor, some of the bars were twisted and bent, and the door to the cell had been blown right off its hinges. It was lying in the other side of the room, just about embedded in the wall. A small pile of rubble surrounded it. And then of course, there was an ominously large pool of blood next to it, complete with a decorative patch high up on the wall.

"What is this?" Pietro breathed, surveying the scene with open-mouthed confusion.

"Probably exactly what we're looking for," Imogen said and, galvanised by the chance to talk while they worked, crossed the room to examine the gap where the door was supposed to be.

"Your friend?" She didn't bother turning to witness the disbelief on his face. "If she was here, I don't think we will find her now."

Imogen ignored him, leaning over to examine the hinges – or what was left of them. Something had made the door tear itself off of them, and she could only think of one explanation that didn't involve a bomb that there was no other evidence of.

"Ruby was here," she confirmed, straightening. "And I think she escaped too."

"How do you know that?" Pietro asked.

"Yeah, Imogen," a familiar voice echoed from the stairs, somewhere in the darkness behind them. "How _do_ you know that?"

Her blood ran cold.


	8. Family Values

**8 - Family Values**

oooooooo

A proper torch flicked on by the stairs as the voice faded, blinding them with its light and putting her phone's little light to shame. She squinted against its beam and raised a hand to try to protect her eyes. The other hand reached for her gun.

"Careful," the man behind it continued, and even though she could not see it, she could hear the click of the safety on a gun that was not hers. "No sudden moves now." Reluctantly, she left her gun where it was.

"Who is this?" Pietro asked, taking two steps back to stand next to her. She'd never been so relieved to see someone move slowly before.

"You have a new friend?" the man taunted. "I bet you haven't told him about your past."

"What?" Pietro frowned and turned to Imogen. "You know this man?"

"Yeah," she replied, still struggling to see anything past the torch light. "That's…well, that's my brother. Will."

"You know, you were the last person I was expecting to see here," Will said. The torch dropped a little, enough that she was able to make out his familiar face behind it…and his gun. "I wasn't expecting to see anyone, actually They said this place was empty."

" _They_ ," she repeated. "I wasn't aware HYDRA still had anyone to command them."

He laughed. "What, you think HYDRA is dead? We're the one thing that will never die, Imogen. You should know that."

"HYDRA are being hunted down so easily it's on the _evening news_ ," she pointed out. For a moment, it felt horrifyingly like the old rapport they used to have, before she'd realised her mistakes and run away. But _no_ , she reminded herself sternly, this was much more tense than that – now, he had a gun pointed at her, and Pietro stood ready, five seconds away from just attacking and being done with it.

Will considered it. "Alright, so I might be working for someone else at the moment, until that all clears itself up," he admitted. "Another old friend of yours; I hear she helped you unlock some hidden abilities."

The very mention of it turned her fingers cold. "You're working with _Lena_?" she asked in disbelief.

"She's paying very well for us to retrieve a few old science experiments for her." Imogen's eyes narrowed suspiciously as a grin spread across his face. "Which reminds me, you're going to have to come with me now."

Pietro lurched forward at that, apparently sick of waiting around now. She reached out and caught his arm before he could speed across the room, just barely stopping him in his tracks. "Wait," she said in response to the annoyed look he gave her, busy watching Will's gun swing over to point at Pietro.

"Why?" he asked, like there wasn't any kind of weapon currently fixed on him. "This is no use."

"I just have one more question," she explained, and turned back to Will. "Why did you even come here?"

Her brother was still wearing a smug grin. "Who says I didn't come looking for you?" he threw at her.

"Because there's no reason for anyone to come looking for me here?" she said, deadpan. "I'm not stupid, Will."

"Aren't you?" he asked jokingly, but his smile faded. "If you're so smart, you can figure out why I came. It's not hard."

He was right; it wasn't. HYDRA were gone from here, cleaned up and moved out, and he was working for INTEL, who Ruby had some sort of history with. They'd come here looking for the same thing, and instead they'd found each other.

"Why does Lena want Ruby?" she demanded, know that she was pushing her luck.

"Come with me and find out," was the only reply he would give her. Frustrated, she gave up, and let go of Pietro's arm.

It only took a second for him to disappear and reappear being Will, casting weird shadows in the torchlight as he flashed across the room. Will's gun wavered when he realised it was no longer pointed at anyone and that Pietro had moved, and Imogen took the opportunity to duck for cover behind a nearby set of cabinets and shelves before he could decide to shoot her instead.

"What the-" she heard her brother say, and then there was a solid _thump_ and the even louder noise of him falling to the floor, gun and all.

Having watched him fall, Imogen came out of hiding and kicked his gun away from his hand. Will didn't stir. She was only half sure he was still breathing.

"We should go _now_?" Pietro asked in exasperation, standing over Will.

"Well you've knocked out our only source of information," she replied dryly, picking up Will's flashlight. "So yeah, we go now, before anyone else finds us down here."

Pietro scoffed. "Nothing he was saying makes any sense," he claimed.

" _Everything_ he said made sense," Imogen argued, swapping her phone for a gun now that she had a proper flashlight.

"Who is this _Lena_ then? Why are they looking for you? And why is your brother HYDRA?" Pietro took a step closer, looking over her, and suddenly she was very aware of how much taller than her he was. "Are _you_ HYDRA?" he asked menacingly.

She refused to let herself be intimidated by him, and stood up a little bit taller, staring him right in the eye. "I am _not_ ," she told him firmly. "And if you ever ask me that again, we are done with this whole thing. I don't need you to knock people out and ask stupid questions."

Silence followed, and then, inexplicably, he backed down, unable to meet her eye again.

A sound from somewhere above them was the motivation she needed to get moving again. "We're wasting time," she said abruptly. "Will doesn't go on missions alone. Someone else will be down here looking for him soon." She didn't wait for Pietro to reply, just took a few steps towards the stairs and shone the flashlight around the room one last time, looking for any last clues. Nothing else stood out, just the bent bars on that last cell and the impossibly twisted door that looked like it had been hit by a train.

It _had_ to be Ruby and her freaky secret powers. Had to. But why had she blown the door off? To escape? She'd never envisioned Ruby escaping by herself before, not with her cowed, stuttering demeanour. The girl could barely bring herself to leave her apartment, let alone a prison cell deep inside a HYDRA base.

At the top of the stairs, Pietro took the flashlight from her and led the way, back through the maze of corridors. She could hear other people now, agents from Will's team stalking the halls. One of them was close, though Imogen couldn't quite pick which direction their footsteps were coming from; in here, noise bounced all over the place, making it impossible to track anyone.

Just as she was wondering if they should be moving more carefully, they rounded a corner and ended up almost on top of the agent she'd been listening to. The woman rocked back in surprise and squinted against the light of their torch, which Pietro had pointed straight into her eyes.

"What the – Haylock, is that you?" she sputtered, clearly surprised. "Could you get the torch outta my face?"

There was a moment where none of them moved, and then Pietro shoved the torch into Imogen's hands and rushed at the woman, knocking her off of her feet like a bowling pin. " _Aiziet_ ," he snapped at her and started off down the hall again. Imogen hurried after him, stepping around the woman on the floor.

To her surprise, a hand wrapped around her ankle as she passed; the woman wasn't quite out, apparently, and didn't seem to know when she was beaten. Imogen fell heavily to the ground, the flashlight skittering away and throwing the hall into darkness. Desperately, she kicked out at the last place she had seen the woman, trying to throw off her hands, and twisted so that she could reach out and try to grab at her too.

Her foot connected with solid flesh and the soft _oomph_ of breath that followed told her she had gotten the woman right in the stomach. The fingers slipped away from her ankle, and Imogen's fingers found the woman's collar. She wasn't out of breath for long though; as Imogen tried to shove her into the wall, a fist hit her square in the jaw, snapping her head to the right.

Light shone over the two of them as they fell to the ground again, grappling for some kind of advantage over the other. It lit up the face of Will's lackey just as Imogen managed to draw back a fist, highlighting the vicious snarl her lips were drawn into. Imogen went straight for her nose, and a satisfying crack echoed through the hallway as her fist connected with the woman's face – the INTEL agent cried out in pain and let her go, and Imogen planted a foot square on her chest and kicked her away into the wall, where she finally fell silent.

She scrambled to her feet. Pietro stood several feet away with the flashlight, staring at her. "Thanks for the help," she grumbled, and touched the sore spot on her jaw where the woman had punched her.

"I didn't think you needed any," he replied impishly, and she resisted the urge to hit him too.

"Yeah well," she said, pushing her way past him and ripping the torch from his hands on her way past. "Next time you knock someone out, make sure you actually _knock them out_."

Pietro muttered something behind her but she didn't bother asking him to repeat it, just started off down the hall, faster this time. Someone was bound to have heard that fight. They weren't bothered again on the way out though, not even in the guard's room at the top of the stairs. Suspicious. Imogen turned the flashlight off there, using the moonlight from the ajar door to navigate the wrecked room instead.

"We should turn that back on, no?" Pietro asked when he tripped over something halfway across the room. "There is no way to see in here."

"Shush," she told him in a near whisper, eyes on the door. "Will's team are still here."

"So? It will be easier to see them coming with the light." Imogen rolled her eyes and pushed past him. She could feel his annoyance follow her across the room. "What are you doing?" he pressed as she hid in the shadows by the door, trying to see outside.

" _Oh my god_." She whipped back around to glare at him, her back temporarily to the door. "Do you ever shut up?"

Before he could respond, something heavy slammed into the back of her head. The force of it sent her crashing to the ground, spots dancing in front of her eyes. Almost on instinct she rolled and kicked out at their shins, only vaguely realising she'd stopped them from hitting her again as her boot connected. A second later and they went flying into the doorframe with a strangled scream and crumpled next to her.

Pietro stood in their place, just a vague silhouette against the night sky. Imogen thought she saw him extend a hand, but her head was pounding and everything was sort of blurry so she didn't take it. Surely HYDRA or INTEL or whatever could wait five minutes for it to subside before they came looking for a fight. He said something to her, and she managed to mumble something back – _what_ she said, exactly, she wasn't sure – and then he was ignoring her protests and the spinning in her head and hauling her to her feet of his own volition.

She thought they would start walking then (or running, god forbid), but something in the room behind them caught Pietro's attention. "You want to go again, _mazs vīrietis_?" she heard him say around the tumping in her head and no, of _course_ the bad guys weren't going to wait for something so trivial as a concussion. That would make everything too easy.

"You're pretty fast." That was her brother. She wasn't even surprised. Not that she had the capacity to feel surprised at the moment.

No, she needed to focus. Now was not the time to lose her head. "Super speed, right?" Will continued from across the room. "What are you, an Avenger?"

"Why do you want to know?" Pietro spat back.

"I just want to figure out how much persuasion it will take to get you to work for us," Will said smoothly.

Pietro scoffed. "I do not work for anybody," he proclaimed proudly. "Especially not people like you."

Imogen couldn't see Will past Pietro's tall frame, so her eyes turned to the yard instead, looking for danger as her vision slowly stopped swimming. There's was one next to a big pile of logs, she noticed, as Pietro continued his argument with her brother. She stared at them for a full minute without actually comprehending that there was a person and she should probably do something about that, right up until the second they pulled out a gun. Suddenly, she couldn't move fast enough.

"Look out!" she managed to choke out as she dropped to the ground, dragging Pietro with her. He clocked the looming danger much quicker than she had – maybe he heard the gun fire or something – and then he was gone, and instead of bullets a gargled scream sounded from that direction.

Imogen was distracted from listening to the fight by a hand on her arm, its tight grip pulling her to her feet again. She found herself looking into the angry brown eyes of her brother.

"Stop it," he said as she struggled to free herself from his grip. "I'm sorry Imogen, but I have a job to do. Lena is better than HYDRA, isn't she?"

She could feel her hands growing cold again – and for the first time in a long time, she was relieved. "You're nuts," she told him angrily, and clawed at his hand with her own. He let her go with a hiss, clutching at his probably freezer burnt fingers and she managed to stumble away a few steps, out of his reach.

"What the-" He stared at his hand in disbelief, and suddenly she realised that he didn't know what she could do. What Lena had done to her. "How-?"

"You should be careful who you take jobs from," she said, trying to spot Pietro in the darkness and the junkyard. It was hard when her head was still spinning. "They might not tell you everything." She though she spotted a glimpse of blue in between piles of timber to her left, and hoped that it meant he had noticed the situation he had left her in.

"What do you mean?" Will asked.

She huffed impatiently. "Do I really have to spell it out for you?" Before he could answer, Pietro appeared to slam him neatly into a wall. For the second time today, Will dropped like a stone.

"Do you always spend this much time talking to HYDRA?" he asked, and she couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

Either way, she wasn't in the mood. "Where the hell were-" She didn't get to finish because he pushed her back inside the building amidst a fresh round of gunfire.

"There are still two left," he explained as, once again, she wrenched herself from his grip.

"Coming here was a really bad idea," she told him. "I'm never listening to you again."

"We should just go then," he replied, and she saw a flash of irritation in his eyes. "And then you can tell me all these things you didn't say before."

"Oh sure, just let me take care of these idiots with guns, then we can have a long and emotional conversation about how you think I work for HYDRA."

He didn't even bother answering, just rolled his eyes and moved, too fast for her to see. They disappeared just as Will blinked back to awareness, there one moment and gone the next. He wondered for a moment if he was hallucinating.

oooooooo

"You need some more water?" Nora asked him ten or twenty minutes later, holding up a bottle. Will almost missed it; they'd only just made it back to the vans, and his head was still spinning from the walk. His only consolation was that Imogen, wherever she was, would not be feeling any better, if Hanson had given her as solid a knock to the head as she said she had. Nora had him sitting on the ground, propped up against the van' wheel, just in case he threw up or something. So far, he just had a giant headache.

Seeing Nora was still standing there, he shook his head. "I just want Lena on the line as soon as possible," he told her. She nodded and disappeared back into the van, presumably to chase Murphy for him.

She was a nice girl, Nora, tall and fair and kind enough to laugh at terrible jokes and raise the morale of her team even when it was clear she didn't belong here. She wasn't the sort of person he would usually put on his team but she'd gone through part of SHIELD's advanced weapons program and was medically trained by INTEL staff, which made her valuable to a small team like his. And tonight, she'd been the only one not directly confronted by the speedster that had ripped through his entire team. She'd even stood her ground long enough to take several shots at him, meaning that she'd more than proved herself capable. If she had a little more bravery and a little less kindness, she would have been one of SHIELD's best.

She returned again, this time with an earpiece in her hands. He took it from her with a fleeting smile and made a note to tell her what a good job she'd done later. She needed the confidence boost. Now though, he had questions that needed answering.

"Hello?" he said as he attached the earpiece. A burst of static greeted him in return, and then silence. "Lena?"

"I hear you," her voice crackled in response. He wondered what was blocking Murphy from making a decent connection. "You have something to report? Did you find her?"

"Ruby Radford? No." He paused to glance at Nora, who had popped out fo the van again, but she didn't even look at him this time, walking over to Hanson instead. "If she was here, she's long gone now. My sister was here though."

He heard Lena's breath catch in her throat. "In Pennsylvania? Did you grab her?"

"We tried, but she has a new enhanced friend. Also, she touched my hand and now Nora is telling me I have _freezer burn_. Mind explaining that to me?"

"Another enhanced?" Lena said, ignoring his question. "What kind of enhanced? Are they powerful?"

"Superspeed, Lena," Will informed her reluctantly. "He moves too fast to see. Packs a punch when he hits you too. What the hell aren't you telling me about my sister?"

He heard Lena sigh. "We may have used your mother's research to run some experiments of our own when Imogen was in our custody last year," she explained slowly. "And we had some success, before she got away from us."

"And you didn't think that you should tell me that before I came out here?"

"Will, I didn't think she'd be there, did I?" Lena sounded annoyed now. "As far as we know, Imogen Haylock lives somewhere in New York, under the Avengers' protection. If I'd known you'd be facing her, I would have briefed you." She paused to let that sink in before continuing. "What _was_ she doing there anyway?"

"Looking for the other girl, Ruby," Wil snapped. "They know each other, apparently. You need better intel, Lena, or you're going to need to change the name of your organisation."

Lena sighed again, heavier this time. He wondered what it would take for her to fire him. "Just come back to base," she said finally. "There are others to retrieve; if the Radford girl is with your sister now, we may need them first."

"And you'll tell me everything you've been up to, so that this doesn't happen again," Will added in no uncertain terms.

"I'd like nothing more," Lena said smoothly and then killed the connection herself. Will threw away the earpiece in disgust, not at all relieved by the conversation.

oooooooo

Imogen was vaguely aware of being picked up, of a blur of colours as she was carried _somewhere_ , and then of throwing up in a bush the moment she was back on her own two feet.

Several minutes after she'd done that, once the world had stopped spinning, she realised she was sitting on her knees on a lawn somewhere, the damp grass soaking through her pants. It looked like a park, albeit a very dark one, filled with lawns and scattered trees and the odd flowerbed, and a set of tennis courts in the distance. That was as disconcerting as her possible concussion – how had she gotten here, when just a few minutes ago she'd been in an industrial area fighting INTEL?

Pietro came into view then, and everything made sense.

"Are you alright?" he asked, standing over her. She thought about standing up to join him, but the very idea made her stomach roll and so she thought better of it and sat back in the grass instead.

"You couldn't have done that earlier?" she replied, and realised too late that she sounded a little harsh.

"I didn't think you would like it if I did," he replied peevishly, crossing his arms.

She scowled at him. "How could anyone _enjoy_ moving that fast?"

"I do," he pointed out.

"Yeah well, you're…" She couldn't think of an appropriately demeaning comeback, "…weird," she finished lamely, and let her eyes drift shut.

She shouldn't be letter herself anywhere near sleep when she's almost completely sure she has a concussion, but now that they are out of danger and it is quiet, she can't ignore the throbbing in the back of her head or the fatigue from adrenaline.

Pietro shook her awake, nudging her leg with one sneaker-clad foot. "Hey," he said. "You shouldn't sleep."

"Why not?" she asked, trying to focus on his face in the darkness. There was barely any moonlight tonight, and that made it hard to see anything but the most basic features of his face.

"You have to tell me now," he explained. "About this _Lena_. And why you have a brother who is with HYDRA."

"What, you're telling me you don't have an evil twin?" she quipped lazily. "My brother works for HYDRA, so what?" He's a loser and I hate him. End of story."

"No," he said firmly, looming over her. "You have never joined him?"

She hesitated, but in the end she couldn't lie. "Fine, I wasted like seven years of my like in SHIELD training as a HYDRA sleeper agent. Clint talked me out of it. Happy?"

"No," he said stiffly. Silence fell over them like a blanket, and he sat down in front of her like he couldn't bear its weight for more than a second. "Is that why they are after you?"

"Last time I saw them, it was." She stopped to yawn and he frowned impatiently. "But uh – well, not he's teamed up with Lena, so they probably want me for a science experiment or something." She stopped, and then realised she hadn't really explained anything. "Lena runs this…well, it's basically a less scary HYDRA. They're called INTEL. She's desperate to learn the secret to creating superheroes."

"You mean like me?" Pietro asked. "Like my sister?"

Imogen shrugged. "Depends if you were born like that, or if someone played lab rat with you recently." She looked to him for a response, but he was tight-lipped. Before she could press the subject, he was on his feet, staring back in the direction they had come.

"We should go home," he said in lieu of on answer to her question.

"Are you driving?" Imogen asked, struggling to her feet behind him.

Pietro turned to look at her, confused. "Why would I?"

"Maybe because I have a concussion and could pass out or something at any moment," she pointed out., and then had a thought. "Wait – _can_ you drive? Do you even know how?"

"I can drive," he said hotly, annoyed at her underestimation of his skills. "I am just not allowed to in this country. Apparently."

"Apparently?"

"It doesn't matter," he said abruptly. "Let's go." Imogen wasn't sure if she should push the subject or not, but he was already stalking away through the park, so she decided to leave it and followed him.

oooooooo

 _A/N: Please review? Feedback is love. Thanks for reading! :)_


	9. Learning Curves

_A/N: most of this chapter got removed because it was awful and I hated it. oops. enjoy anyway, and please review :)_

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9 - Learning Curves

Lena's bidding took him next to London; or more accurately, a tiny little town on the outskirts of London with a population of maybe 40 people. Will wasn't very happy about it. He didn't like England very much – it was too cold and dreary, and he'd once spent a week huddled on a rooftop in the rain here at the behest of SHIELD only to see no action at all. After that, England just seemed like a bad place to be.

And true to form, as he and his team drove towards this town Lena had sent them off to, it started to drizzle, just to make the puddles on the road a little bigger. They were after a guy, she said, that could heal any injury with a touch. No more need for medically trained agents on a team, and no more losing team members on dangerous missions. Will could certainly relate to that part; after losing his entire HYDRA team to the Winter Soldier, he was more than happy to go and collect a living medpack, especially when Lena had already promised to add the man to his team.

"This guy couldn't have decided to live anywhere else," Murphy commented dryly next to him. He too had been on the long rooftop operation back in the SHIELD days, though Will wasn't sure where he got the right to complain from; while he had been out in the rain, Murphy had been in the apartment below, with a heater going and three laptops to keep him entertained.

"Can't handle a little rain, Murphy?" That was Jordan, their perpetually bad-tempered weapons expert. Murphy found her intimidation and she knew it – she also knew exactly how much she could push the boundaries before Will kicked her off the team.

"Tech's not that waterproof," Murphy replied, and he sounded peeved. Jordan just looked smug. "If you want radios, you can't have rain."

"We won't need radios," Nora interrupted before Jordan could take another dig. "This guy'll come quietly."

"What makes you think that?" Will asked.

"I knew Henry when he first started at INTEL," she explained. "He's an office guy. Wouldn't hurt a fly. I doubt he's changed much since then."

"Unless that experimental crap made him crazy like that other girl," Burnett called from the front seat, driving them through another pothole.

Nora shot an annoyed look at the back of his head. "That was totally different," she threw back at him. "Henry's not crazy. He's just careful."

"What's he talking about?" Will said over the top of Burnett's sarcastic response.

Nora sighed. "You know how all these people we're after are Lena's science experiments?" she began.

"I figured as much," Will replied.

"Yeah, well, she sort of went one experiment too far with that girl we were looking for in Pennsylvania. Ruby. Turned her into a nervous wreck."

"What was she trying to do?"

Nora shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted.

"She was trying to figure out how to control her," Jordan said, surprising them all. She gave them a withering look. "What? I was one of the handlers. Got thrown across the room like five times by that crazy chick."

"Hey, we're here," Burnett called out. "Y'know, if anyone cares." The van jerked to a stop a moment later, and the engine cut out, leaving only the pattering of rain on the roof.

"Alright," Will said, and glanced around at the waiting faces of his team. "Nora, you know this guy best. What's our play here?"

She looked genuinely surprised that he'd called on her, and then visibly gathered herself. "Two people should go in," she said slowly, uncertain of herself. "He's not a threat, and there's no point scaring him any more than we have to."

"You're with me then," Will decided. Nora was speechless once again. "Hanson and Burnett, circle around the house, find yourselves a vantage point in case he runs and be ready to trail him. The rest of you stay here. Murphy's in charge."

Jordan's face darkened. "What, you mean we came all the way to England to play _back-up_?" she asked incredulously.

"That's the point of backup, Jordan," Will replied calmly, moving towards the door. "You can take first watch over him tonight though, if that will make you feel better."

"That's just messed up," he heard her mutter behind him in response, but didn't bother replying, just slid the door open to let out himself, Nora, and Hanson. Burnett climbed out of the driver's seat a moment later, blinking against the gentle downpour of rain.

"Which house are we looking at Burnett?" Will asked.

"That one just there," Burnett replied, pointing down the road to a little cottage surrounded by a wild garden and crumbling stone fence. The front gate sagged in its hinges and a ferocious creeper poked through the fence in several places, trying its best to throttle the sidewalk like it had the garden. Will could just see the door to the house beyond the garden, old and shabby and covered in peeling paint.

"Give me five minutes to circle around the back," Hanson said and, at a nod from Will, turned and headed off down the street. Burnett went the other way, meandering along and pretending to admire the neat gardens of other houses along the way. Will stayed by the van, leaning against the hood while Nora pretended to fiddle with the tyre.

"Do you know what they're going to do with Henry?" she asked while they waited, still staring at the tyre.

"Not exactly," Will replied. "Lena needs him for a team she's building. Why?"

Nora shrugs. "Nothing really. He just used to be my friend, before he volunteered for her experiments. I guess I still care what happens to him."

"Do you know what he can do?"

"He heals people, I know," she said. "He healed me once. But…well, I'm sure Lena told you he can't heal himself-"

"What?" Will stood up straight for a second, then remembered what they were doing and relaxed back against the van. "Lena didn't mention that, actually."

"Well, anyway, he got badly injured soon after the experiment, and then he had to leave INTEL and we stopped talking. I just don't want anything bad to happen to him when he comes back."

"I don't think Lena is going to let anything terrible happen to someone as valuable as him," Will assured her, and then glanced at his watch. "Hanson will be in position by now. We should go."

Nora stood and dusted herself off. He took point as they headed down the road in the same direction Burnett had gone. With a little luck, it would look like they were chasing after him rather than about to drop in on Henry. Not that he should be on guard about anything anyway – he wasn't supposed to be the paranoid type, and Lena had specifically mentioned in their debrief that he had left INTEL on fairly good terms; injury was the only reason he wasn't still there.

Turning up his garden path, they still couldn't see any movement in the house, which could be a bad sign or a good one. The garden itself was just as wild as it looked, and they almost had to fight their way through just to get to the front door. Nora was surprisingly brave then, ringing the doorbell before Will could even lay a hand on it. It was good that she was becoming more confident. He didn't mind having someone level-headed like Nora on his team. It was a change from the rough-and-ready types of HYDRA, where they would eat her alive.

Henry came to the doorbell without suspecting a thing, much to Will's amazement. His eyes first landed on Will, who he judged as not a threat, and then turned to Nora and widened in recognition.

"No," he said, and tried to slam the door in their faces.

"Hey!" Will lurched forward and caught the door before it could shut, bodily forcing it open again. The man behind it was frozen in his hallway, back pressed up again an antique hallstand. "Are you Henry Walker?" he asked, though he was pretty sure he knows the answer, just from the man's reaction.

Henry nodded mutely, just as Nora came barrelling in behind them. "Henry, stop, it's okay," she said. "We're not here to hurt you."

His eyes tracked from Will to her. " _It's okay_ ," he repeated. "Like it was _okay_ the last time you said that to me, right before my leg got blown off?" His voice was shaking, and so were his hands as he pointed down at his left foot, where a prosthetic leg was just visible.

"T-that wasn't supposed to happen." Now it was Nora's voice that wavered, and Will realised he wouldn't be able to leave her to do all the talking here. "I'm sorry, Henry. But you have to come back now."

"No," Henry says again. "I already told Lena, I'm done. I'm not doing anything else for anybody."

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice," Will told him, before Nora could start pleading again.

Henry's eyes narrowed. "Who are you, exactly?"

"Your new team leader," Will said, not fooled for a second by the man's brave face. "Who had better things to do than stand here and argue with you all day, so hurry it up."

"Hurry up?" Henry scoffed. "I told you, I'm not going anywhere; especially not America. Way too many aliens and shady organisations using people for science."

"You've got one last chance to come with us willingly," Will said. Henry rolled his eyes and turned away, presumably to try and escape through the house.

Nora didn't even need to be prompted; before he could take more than three steps she had the taser she always carried in her hand and took him down with one powerful zap straight to his back. He crumpled to the floor like a puppet whose strings had just been cut, totally unconscious, and Nora turned to Will with wide eyes.

"Good?" she asked when he didn't immediately respond, turning the taser off.

He shook his head slowly, and stepped forward so he could turn Henry over onto his back and check that he was still breathing. "Better than good," he told Nora as he did so. "You should call Burnett and tell him we need help carrying him out of here."

"Oh," she said. "Right." Raising a finger to the comms device Murphy had made her stick in her ear, she turned away to hail Burnett. Will stayed in the hallway, one eye on Henry at all times just in case he woke up fighting. There wasn't much to him, though Lena said he would be very valuable to the team. Able to heal anything, as long as it was someone else's injury. And, you know, you could convince him to work for you. _That_ part he was excited to see.

Not ten minutes later, Nora was back with Burnett in tow. He was a big guy, Burnett, built heavy and sturdy, and while he wasn't the prettiest face to look at, or the fastest on his feet, he could pack a punch like nobody else. And just to prove his strength, he didn't even waste a second in planning, just walked right in and slung Henry's limp body over his shoulder. "Time to go?" he asked, and at a nod from Will, led the way back out into the rain. "Good, cause I've been standin' around in this weather for long enough."

"So, boss," Nora said, falling into step next to him. "What's our next move?"

Will shrugged. "Back to America," he replied, his eyes on Henry. "And then onto our next target."

"Do you know who it is?"

He should tell her to stop asking questions and mind her own business, like he would have done with anyone from his team at HYDRA, but Nora was beginning to prove herself a capable leader, once given the courage to do so, and there wasn't much harm in giving her one little piece of information.

"Christina Paterson," he told her. "Chicago." Nora nods, and they walk the rest of the way to the car in silence.


	10. Bonds That Are Broken

_A/N: leave a review so I know you're reading? ;)_

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10 - Bonds That Are Broken

Imogen was walking the streets of Queens when she felt the familiar rush of air that meant Pietro had found her.

Sure enough, he appeared in front of her with a lazy grin, making her stop in her tracks lest she run into him. She considered trying to elbow him aside, but knew it would never work and settled for glowering at him instead.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. It was a fair question, considering she'd specifically not told him she was coming here.

"Looking for you," he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"And you just happened to come looking in Queens?" she questioned. "Are you psychic as well as fast?"

She'd meant it sarcastically, but he was completely serious when he said, "No, that is Wanda." Clearly, his sense of humour was lacking. "I went to your house, but you were not there, so I asked the _griesti_ , and she says you are here."

She gave him an annoyed look. "What's a _griesti_?"

"The woman," he explained unhelpfully, gesturing towards the sky. "In Stark's tower."

"Oh, _FRIDAY_?" she said in disbelief.

" _Ja_ ," he crowed triumphantly. " _FRIDAY_ , that one." He said it as a wild mess of syllable that only vaguely made sense, like his tongue just wasn't capable of saying FRIDAY properly.

"How do you not know her name by now?" Imogen asked.

"It is hard to say," he replied defensively.

" _How_?"

" _Es nezinu_! Just is." He looked vaguely annoyed at her now, and she couldn't help but feel a little satisfied at breaking his cool façade. Maybe now he would leave her alone, she thought as she ducked around him, getting too close for her own comfort, and continued on her way.

He was too quick to shake, falling in beside her just a few steps later. "Why are you here anyway?"

Imogen considered lying to him, going somewhere else and coming back later without him, but there was no point; no matter what she did, he seemed determinded to keep following her around, like there was nothing else to do in New York. "I'm looking for Ruby," she told him, once she'd made up her mind.

"You think she is here?" he asked dubiously, looking around.

Imogen shrugged. "She has an apartment here, I might as well check if she came back to it or not."

"But HYDRA will have found it, no?"

"There's only one way to find out," she said resolutely, and stopped in front of Ruby's building. It was a big, cold complex, a few stories higher than Imogen's home and containing way more than eight apartments. There were no barbeques on the roof here, she was willing to bet. This was the sort of place where you barely know the name of the person across the hall, let alone everything about them.

"What if they are here?" Pietro continued, not one to give up. "You will fight them on you own?" There was a challenge in his voice, one she didn't like.

"I don't need you," she snapped back as they entered the building. Second floor, FRIDAY had said, first on the left. She headed for the stairs.

"Everywhere you go you are in a fight," he pointed out unhelpfully, ignoring the way she stomped up the stairs in an effort to drown him out. "I think you need all the help you will get."

"Well you're no help at all, so feel free to leave any time you want."

His eyes narrowed. "You just say that," he claimed. "You don't mean it."

"Don't I?"

She didn't hear his response because they reached the top of the stairs, and then right there was Ruby's apartment. It wasn't very inviting – the number had fallen off the door, leaving only a vague imprint where it had once hung, and someone had replaced the flimsy standard lock with a fat, complicated-looking deadlock. It stuck out like a sore thumb, all shiny metal in the midst of faded wallpaper and peeling paint. Ruby would have almost been better off sticking to a crappy lock like all the other doors in the building.

"Do we knock?" Pietro asked, when she didn't immediately move from the top of the stairs.

Imogen shrugged. "Don't know what else we're going to do," she said, and pushed herself forward to knock on the door before he could say anything else.

The knock echoed loudly down the hallway and then faded to nothing. For a long time, not a sound answered, not even a neighbour come to see who was knocking and why they were here. It wasn't weird, Imogen told herself as she knocked a second time. This happened in her own building, visitors getting lost or knocking on the doors of empty apartments accidentally. Everyone usually ignored them too, unless Clint was there to care.

"Maybe we should just break in?" Pietro suggested as they stood in the silence again.

"I don't think that lock is breakable," Imogen replied, nodding towards the deadlock.

"I could break it," he claimed, just as someone walked up the stairs behind them. They gave him a weird look as they passed, and Imogen glared at them in response until they averted their eyes and disappeared up the next flight of stairs.

"Feel free to try," she said as soon as they were alone again. Pietro took a step towards the door but didn't get any further, as a scraping and then several clicks sounded from the other side of it. The door opened a crack, and Ruby appeared in the gap, staring at them.

"D-don't break my door," she said, eyes on Pietro, who she'd picked as the primary offender.

Pietro threw his hands in the air and backed away. "I am not breaking anything," he claimed. Ruby didn't look convinced.

"Ruby?" Imogen said in disbelief. "You really did escape?"

"They were g-going to send me to INTEL," the other girl said. "And you w-weren't coming, a-and I remembered that man, the night they found us…"

"I was coming," Imogen interrupted. "I've been looking everywhere, but I couldn't find you."

"N-no." Ruby shook her head and opened the door a little bit wider. "You were t-there the night I left. I saw y-you run away."

Imogen stopped short. Surely Ruby meant the night that she'd come face to face with the silent, homeless-looking guy in the HYDRA base, the one who had almost blown her brains out. She hadn't seen Ruby anywhere that night; unless she'd missed her in her panic and the darkness…

"Y-you didn't know," Ruby guessed, and nodded to herself. "I-I was there in the shadows. I c-called out, but you left."

"There was a man-" Imogen began, and Ruby's face turned dark.

"I know. He s-saved me after you left. A-and then he followed me."

"He almost killed me," Imogen tried again. "I had to go. I didn't know you were still there, or if you were there at all, and I couldn't fight HYDRA on my own-" She didn't like the pleading tone to her voice, or being on the backfoot while Ruby accused her of all the things she had done wrong the past few weeks. She didn't like the way Ruby was looking at her either, like this was a battle and she was the enemy, and Ruby would throw her across the hallway at any second.

"You broke your promise," Ruby spat, and that was the accusation that hurt the monst. "You said if I helped you I'd n-never be their prisoner again, that you'd save me. A-and you left me there to save yourself and didn't come back."

That was unfair, Imogen decided. "I _tried_ ," she snapped angrily. "Do you want me to die failing to save you? I didn't realise asking you for help was a life debt."

Ruby shrunk back in on herself. "I-it wasn't – I-I-" She was struggling to find a better way to get her point across; or to find any words at all. "Y-you were _right there,_ " she whispered finally, voice shaking. "Y-you couldn't s-see me."

"Maybe I would have if you ever came out of the shadows," Imogen replied, and her voice was hard and unsympathetic.

Ruby curled away at the force of her voice, knuckles turning white from the strength of her grip on the door. "G-get out," she said, as forcefully as she could with a voice that trembled with fear. "I-I can't help you anymore. Don't c-come back here again, o-or I'll make you regret it."

"Yeah, I _bet_ you will," Imogen threw at her immediately. Ruby glared at her, but didn't answer other than to slam the door in their faces. As soon as she was gone, Imogen turned to the stairs, not caring if Pietro was following or not.

"What was that?" Pietro asked, appearing at her side within seconds, as usual.

"Nothing," Imogen huffed and stomped down the stairs.

"No," he pressed. "Something. Why did you fight with her?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Imogen demanded. "Obviously she doesn't want my help anymore, and she wasn't going to listen to me."

"So what do we do now?"

Imogen shrugged. "Find INTEL another way."

"You don't want to go after HYDRA anymore?" Pietro asked. They stepped out onto the street, back into the late afternoon. Imogen turned to glance back up at the windows that would belong to Ruby's apartment.

"No," she said, but the rest of her argument was lost as she just spotted the other girl in one window, half hidden by a curtain. Ruby wasn't looking down to make sure they were leaving though; her eyes were on the building across the street. It was another apartment building, almost exactly the same as Ruby's except for the high fence and danger signs that surrounded it. The windows were burnt out and brick walls were crumbling; either a victim of the New York alien attack, or just a very unlucky building. Imogen scanned its windows, looking for whatever had caught Ruby's attention.

"What is it?" Pietro asked beside her, his frown just visible in her peripheral vision.

 _There_. On the second floor, she was sure she saw movement in one window. "Didn't Ruby say the man who attacked HYDRA followed her out of the base?" she asked Pietro, who still looked confused.

" _Ja,_ " he replied. "Why?"

"I think I found our next lead," she said. Without waiting for him to reply, she marched across the street towards the building, leaving him to follow in her wake.

oooooooooo

Will was almost asleep in the back of the van when his earpiece beeped loud enough to blow his ears out. Jumping, he ripped it away from his ear, and then woke up enough to realise that turning down the volume would make it stop. It beeped again as he replaced it, much quieter now, and this time he answered the call.

"Will?" Nora's voice filtered through the ringing in his ear, and he sighed and stretched back out on the back seat he was using as a bed.

"What's up, Nora?" he asked.

"I just got a message from home back," Nora said. In the background, he could hear the tapping of her fingers on a keyboard and the low rumble of a car's engine. If he sat up, he'd probably be able to see the front of the other van, the one she and Murphy were riding in. "Grace Weber turned herself in."

He frowned, trying to remember which one of their targets was Grace Weber. "Is that the one from Idaho?" he asked. "Small, blonde, runs a Twitter account or something."

"Everyone has a Twitter account," Nora replied. "But yes, the one from Idaho. A team is going to pick her up now."

"One less job for us to do then." The van hit a bump in the road, and he had to reach up to grab the back of the seat he was lying on to stop himself from falling. A moment later, he heard something fall on Nora's end of the line as they hit the same bump. "How far away are we from the other one?"

"About to pull up, actually." As she said it, the van dropped speed and turned a sharp corner, continuing on only a little further before drawing to a halt. Sighing, Will sat up and stretched, and then climbed through to open the door and lead his small team out.

He stepped out of the van to find himself in the midst of the slums of Chicago, in a cold, wet night. Nora was already waiting for him, standing under the only streetlight that didn't flicker and struggle to light the road. She was busy talking to Murphy, who was leaning out the door of the van that held all his tech. He handed her a gun as Will approached, which she tucked into the back of her jeans.

"Ready?" he asked when he reached them. Their conversation stopped abruptly.

"As we'll ever be," she replied, calmer than she had ever been before a mission. She was hiding her nerves under it, he knew; it was what hadn't made her cut out for SHIELD work, and a problem she was still working through. He ignored it for now. If Nora froze, there were plenty of other agents to pick up the slack. It wasn't like they were on a particularly difficult mission or anything.

"What are we looking at here?" he asked, glancing around. It wasn't much of a neighbourhood, just a street full of rundown or boarded up old houses. The one right in front of them had a front yard full of junk, from a mouldy, sagging sofa, to a rusted oven, to an old car with a crumpled hood and no wheels.

Murphy poked his head out a little further to point at a house with peeling blue paint and a front fence that was held together by bits of wire two doors down. "Three people live there, the girl and her parents. Her dad thinks he's a real tough guy, and he's not going to be happy about this." He withdrew back to his computer inside the van.

"I don't care if he's happy about it or not," Will replied, eyes on the house. "Have you got the teams ready?"

"They're moving into place now," Nora replied. "We should get moving."

"Good luck," Murphy called from the dark van, and then slid the door closed. Nora started off towards the house without a second thought, probably because if she gave it any thought she'd never go, and Will followed, one hand close to his gun just in case. Hanson was waiting for them outside, crouched down behind the front fence. Will motioned for him to join them, and one by one they vaulted almost soundlessly over the gate and crept up a garden path of cracked concrete and wilted lawn. What a girl with such interesting powers as this one held was doing living in a place like this, he would never understand. From what Nora had told him, Christina Paterson was a powerful telepath capable of invading minds and planting thoughts. She should be living in a castle, with everything she could ever want around her, but apparently using her talent for exploitation had never occurred to her.

Nora picked the lock on the front door easily, and pushed it open just enough for Burnett to slide inside. It creaked as she opened it so she didn't dare open it any further, or close it behind her.

"Stay here, Nora," Will murmured to her, and gestured for her to guard the door. The rest of their information on the girl indicated that she was likely to try and run if she had half a chance. She had not left INTEL on a good note.

As Nora took up her position, the sound of fighting broke out unexpectedly in the next room, a grunt and a small crash, and then the smack of something heavy colliding with human flesh. Will pulled out his gun and picked his way through the dark living room, Hanson hot on his heels.

He reached the door into a kitchen just in time to spot a baseball bat flying towards his face, and ducked and rolled ungracefully away from it, hitting the wall and the floor hard. Hanson went barrelling past him to tackle his attacker, a tall, heavily built man with twice as much muscle as anyone on their team. The man barely budged under Hanson's attack, but instead dropped his baseball bat to better utilise his fists.

With a grunt of effort, Will picked himself up off the floor and raised his gun, just as the man dropped Hanson. "Stop," he demanded. The man jumped back in surprise, and his hands shot into the air.

From somewhere else in the house, there was a short scream. Will resisted the urge to glance towards it. "Please don't hurt her," the man said, his eyes locked on the wall through which the sound must have come. "She hasn't done anythin' wrong. Hasn't broken any of the rules. She's just a girl."

"This isn't about any rules," Will replied. "More of a job offer."

"She's not doin' anything for you," the man said, and now he was firm, like he had any say at all in the matter. "She won't do those…things with her mind you keep tryin' to use her for. I forbid it."

"You _forbid it_?" Will laughed. "Sorry, but no. This ends two ways – either you step away and your daughter comes to work with us for a while, or I move you out of the way, and take her forever. Your choice."

The man eyed the gun, and Will tensed in preparation for him to try and go after it. "I ain't movin'," the man said and then lunged, driving at Will with all of his weight.

Will pulled the trigger as they went down, and the gun went off with a bang that sounded twice as loud as usual in the quiet night air. He landed flat on his back with the other man on top of him, bleeding out of a hole in his chest, and pushed him off as fast as he could, sitting up just as Nora burst into the room.

"It's alright," he said quickly, before she could do anything dramatic. "Just dealing with a problem. He might even live if his wife decides to call an ambulance instead of the police."

Nora breathed a visible sigh of relief. "They've got the girl," she informed him. "We should go before anyone comes to investigate."

Will climbed to his feet and followed her. He didn't cast a look back to the man on the ground, struggling to breathe through a collapsed lung. He didn't stick around to see the girl's anguish as she was marched past her father either, or to hear the cry of his wife as she fell to her knees beside him. Will's job here was done.


End file.
